Portobello fog.

Its foggy in Portobello
the dealers are getting quite lost
they can't find their way to E&O
they are selling their wares at cost
I bought a gram for a plastic fiver
then sold it on to a young skip diver
who sold it on to a mate
who sold it on to a mate
then a mate of a mate of a mate of a mate
who eventually snorted the lot.
Without consideration for rhyme.
Now the mate of a mate of a mate of a mate
of a mate of a mate of a mate
is fucking pissed off at having bought a gram of petrol infused talc
and nothing rhymes with that.

Self inflicted cancer for housing purposes.

A true story. Not written looking for sympathy but as anyone who knows what I write finding humour in the darkest of places.

Two months ago I found myself about to be homeless. I phoned RBKC (my local authority) asking for emergency housing help.

They asked for details and I explained my medical condition (chronic but manageable) and was told that unless I had dementia or cancer I did not merit housing support. As far as they were concerned I was not their responsibility.

Fast forward 6 weeks: As a result of a consultation with my GP I was referred to St Marys Hospital for tests on a lump (one of four) that might be cancerous. I will know on the 11th of January.

Should it be cancerous will |I be accused of contracting a cancer in order to obtain housing and benefits? Should it be cancer will they then provide me with housing in order that I might 'die peacefully' at home.

Is there a greater power at work here within my framework that has created this potential cancer in order to meet the body's needs.

I am determined that I shall not bow to either RBKC's nor cancers demands and carry on living my way.

It is all a little ironic though. Or is it paradox.

Don't blame 2016.

It really isn't 2016's fault. Blame 1967 and the summer of love. Blame drug fuelled 'rock n roll' lifestyles. blame anything but don't blame something as abstract as a period of time in a modern calendar. Oh, and 200 years ago all those who died in 2016, had they lived then would have been dead long before anyway (except Bowie who was from another planet). Thank modern medicine for keeping the rest of us alive beyond our natural expectancy.

Drugs either kill you or keep you alive.

ON DEATH.

Death is a punctuation mark.
A full stop.
Death states the obvious.
A full stop.
The full stop defines nothing, 
it is merely a printers device.
Let us not dwell on punctuation, 
on the full stop
but let us celebrate that which precedes it...
 
Celebrate the life.

Memory has no punctuation.
No full stop.

CHRISTMAS GREASINGS.

Pig fat on the turkey
goose fat on the spuds
suet in the mince pies
brandy butter on the puds
lard on the sausages
bacon on the lard
butter in the stuffing
butter on the chard
cream on the yule log
cream on the lot
and grandma's full of baileys
octogenarian drunken sot

Brandy in pater
port and lemon in my mum
and kinky cousin Tarquin
injecting vodka up his bum
Dinner now partaken
napkins mashed and soiled
things going very smoothly thanks
now that every-ones well oiled.

polishing silver with a barrister's sock.

A poem to commemorate 'National Cod Latin Day'.



Sitting in the kitchen
underneath the clock
polishing silver with
a barristers sock

Citing habeas corpus
weeping into legal hose
Shouting: "This is cruelty,
as everybody knows.
 .
Her lordship muttered sternly
"Sedebat in lecto cat.
Just polish the bloody fishknives
Sic biscuittus disintegrat".

A divorcees prayer

You will hate me when this is over
But not as much as I will hate you
Yet I will hate you with affection
While you will hate me with spite
Because you really hate yourself
For once loving me

Any chance of a shag?

Regarding the Killer clown craze, I first posted this on my poetry blog in 2009:: The secrets of magic

The secrets of magic

Things started getting out of hand when the dog got run down in the street out side our window. She had watched it happen and when I got in from work she was standing there in tears. I held her for a while then took her to bed.

I’d first seen her in Stanley Park one afternoon when a bunch of us were sitting around with guitars, playing whatever came into our heads and generally fooling about. A number of kids had congregated to catch the mood and catch the sun, she sat away from the others under the shade of a tree; long thick hair the color of new pennies burning against almost white skin. She wore a green summer dress and red Converse.

I knew she was there but not really there until Gus came along in a daze, stood among us and announced Kurt Cobain was dead. For real! Shot himself in the head and was dead! I looked at her then, alone under that tree; tears running black from her eyeliner. I told myself she needed comfort only really it was me who needed her. So I went to her and held her. She sobbed into my white t-shirt.

We practically stayed like that for the rest of the day, talking about Kurt and singing his songs. Then somebody played ‘In Memory of a Free Festival’ on his boom box and after that the only thing to do was go home or someplace else.

She came back to my place.

We ate pizza and listened to Nirvana CD’s while she cried some more. She laughed when I told her she looked like a clown with her make-up running. We kissed before she left me knowing I would see her again.

Soon we were living together and making plans. Sex wasn’t that great but I put that down to anything I could think of except the truth. I wasn’t going anywhere near the truth back then.

After the dog I started to find more ways to make her cry so I could comfort her. During the day I would make up sad stories to tell her at night. And I would buy her eyeliner and mascara, the cheap stuff that ran, and encourage her to use it.
But I should never have told her about the clown.
.
They found her on the sidewalk, crumpled and broken, except for her face, which, undamaged by the 30 foot fall from the window, she’d made up like a clown’s. Bright red mouth – I’d never known her to wear lipstick - and thick black weep lines running from her eyes. She had cropped her hair. Gelled it so it stood up like a fright wig.

Just like Bepo the clown who at my 8th birthday party led me into the cellar to show me the secrets of magic.

The Notting Hill Promise

They primp and preen like birds of paradise
mimic the sounds of endeavour and success
only to lead me to a bower
lined with tinfoil, bindles
coloured straws
and bottle tops.
they talk of synopses and story boards
and wish upon a shooting script

sniff and blow into a napkin from E and O or the Electric

they talk of dialogue in monologue
they talk of accents gravely and acutely
and the real star is always 'ME'.

Their body of work buried under a drift of new blown snow.

A raddled would be rock chick
on hands and knees
in the ladies loo
hoovering up cocaine
from
a piss stained floor remarks:

'I despise you losers who have to work for a living'
as she mentally remortgages 
daddies inheritance
to reinvest in her habit
and somewhere nearby
an imaginary cameraman smears
a pound of Vaseline
on an already forgiving lens.

In the bars they tell me
'it will never happen
you are one of us
and we never succeed.'

And that woman
somewhere between the Priory and oblivion
quotes Raymond Carver and the things we talk about 
when we talk about love
and I misinterpret self interest
for interest
in a real world that for her
no longer exists.

And i gently humiliate myself
through the floorboards of embarrassment
and then despair
and get drunk
and do a line
and join in, start the rotting process

'Material all' I tell myself
in that padded place called denial.

And life has become nothing more than material
for my obituary.

Urinal song.

I love the sound of piss on zinc

Donna's sleepy tales

of rain on Trinidad tin roofs

that she told me as we lay

in a Gloucester park how

she reeked of passion

and coconut oil

The downpour

on the corrugated school bike shed

where Mandy and I

traded tobacco smoke laden kisses

and held our own geography lessons
discovering America

The rusty dutch barn

in which we made hay

and then hasty crop circles

in that hay

and planned al fresco escapades

in the ripening wheat

Come the sun

Of the beach girl

dancing naked

save a transparent plastic mac

the deluge

drumming on the upturned boats

as I drowned in her exclusive proximity

Before realisation that

it was the breaking of our 'summer'

30 years have leached out all but

the salty memory of those monsoon kisses

that creeps up my spine

At the sound of piss on zinc.

Dreaming of tigers. Daddy what's it like to die?

Daddy what's it like to grow old and die?

It is like going to see the tigers.

Imagine it is a lovely sunny day and you say Daddy I want to see the tigers.

We get into the car and drive to the zoo and you say Daddy I want to see the tigers.

We get our tickets, you are half price and you say Daddy I want to see the tigers.

Daddy I want to see the tigers.

I tell you that the tigers are at the other side of the zoo but we will get to them eventually.

But on the way we see giraffes and eland
springboks and hippos
chimpanzees and wallabys
sad bears.

And you forget about the tigers.

We see seals and penguins
aardvarks and zebras
macaws and owls.

And you forget about the tigers.

In the insect house a butterfly lands on your arm momentarily and you forget about the tigers.

We see wolves and rabbits
dogfish and catfish
gorillas
ants.

And then we see the tigers and the tigers see us, they have been waiting.
You smile and yawn.

It is a lovely day so we go to sit in the park nearby
lie on our backs looking up at the sky
searching for animal shapes in the clouds.

We close our eyes and drift off to sleep

dreaming of tigers.

Trump is not mad. He is just scared.

Jan Nieupjur writes:

As an amateur alternative psychiatrist I am often asked: 'Is Trump mad?"

The answer is of course no. Trump is not mad, he is a narcissist with an ego the size of Texas. Initially the idea of running for presidential office was planted in his brain by his ego. I doubt very much that even Trump would have thought he would be taken seriously as a contender... He probably saw the whole thing as a short lived attention grabbing stunt.

Donald Trump is a three year old child jumping into the deep end of a swimming pool, pretending to be swimming, screaming inwardly, while hoping someone will fish him out.

Trump is not mad. America is for allowing Trump to get so far out of his depth.

Alphabet rain.

Today I burned my poems
a bonfire of my own vanities
words sent skywards
on vortices of their own hot air's making

Some caught in nearby trees
others falling upon the Westway
the majority fly skyward taunting
a million empyrean chimps shakespearing

at their keyboards.

I imagine abstract condensing
amid cumulus then
falling Burroughs like
as alphabet rain forming
nonsense puddles in foreign fields

Or circling vulture like
over a carcass

A stabbing on Portobello road.

We have had a killing on Portobello Road. A 17 year old was mercilessly stabbed to death by another teenager in broad daylight. The killer killed his victim, killed his own future in the process and killed all hope for the victims family for whom my heart bleeds. The killer killed all hope for his family...How can you live with that. The killer killed any justification for allowing children to discipline themselves.
The killer should be handed a copy of 'Lord of the flies' to read in his cell as should his parents as well as the rest of us.

The reason for the killing, from what I can surmise from talking to kids and locals, is that the poor boy was in the wrong place at the wrong time while the undisciplined children of the neighbourhood went out looking for someone to blame for their miserable lives armed with knives. They picked on him rather than picking on their parents.

I am a step parent of sorts to a 13 year old boy. He hates me because he sees my desire to protect him as a desire to control. If he listened to me he would realise that all I want to do is help him survive this mad world. Survive this mad world in order to do all of the shit he wants to do without getting stabbed.

Stabbed by the kid sitting at the desk next to him.

I do not know the victim or his family to whom I can only offer tears, tears I openly shed on Portobello Road this afternoon surrounded by schoolchildren standing at a loss at the makeshift shrine.

Do not blame the children. This is bad parenting.

Why immigrants matter.

As a 10 year old in the 1960's we lived on a fruit and hop farm in Kent. The house was surrounded by hop gardens ( even now I can remember my awe at first standing in a hop garden among the serried majesty of it all), cherry orchards, strawberry and blackcurrant fields. In the farmyard were barns and working Oast houses.

In late summer working class London families would descend upon the farm for the hop picking. They stayed in a row of small brick and corrugated iron huts alongside the lane that led to the village. Often 3 generations of a family would be there to work in the fields and in the sorting sheds. It was their summer holiday and it was a tradition that went back years. The kids were obviously taken out of school because I remember them, armed with pen knives, ambushing us on our way to school with offers of 'You want a knife fight'.

A number of factors put paid to that tradition. Cheap air travel allowing for 'Spanish holidays' and child labour laws being two of them.

It was in a time before the influx of much needed European migrant workers to facilitate the harvest. It seems that it had become 'Infra Dig' to the English.

Now, having looked on Google Earth I see that the hop gardens have gone, the cherry trees have gone, the blackcurrant fields have gone, and with them no doubt the ubiquitous red birdshit that peppered everything. The farmyard has gone save two of the Oast houses which have been converted into a substantial home, The pickers huts have gone. My part of the 'Garden of England' has become arable farmland and grazing. Bland.

Two years later, on the edge of the fens in the shadow of Ely Cathedral, farmers arrived at  school prior to harvest (here it was sugar beet and other root vegetable country) to drum up a workforce for the fields. I have mixed feelings about those days spent in a beet field armed with a 12 inch machete, decapitating the earthy beasts before lobbing them into a slow moving trailer. I was 12. Later in the season, during the winter holiday, the task would be to cover winter carrots with straw to protect them from the frost. My testicles have never recovered.

At that time we lived on a pig farm where I learned to castrate piglets and shoot rats in the feed bins. Both skills will now serve me well in dealing with Farage and his mob.

Child labour laws ensure that all of that is a thing of the past.

It was in a time before the influx of much needed European migrant workers to facilitate the harvest.  which had become 'Infra Dig' to the English who continue to list 'Cider with Rosie' as a favourite book.

Much of our 'homegrown' food  is now brought in from the fields by these migrants, they are essential because no-one else will do it. Every-one demands cheap produce in the shops, even the racists clamouring for  said immigrants departure whilst they book their retirements in Benidorm.

A message in a bottle from Britain.

I am 61 years of age

In the last few months of my life I have watched

Cameron lie his way to becoming the worst prime minister we have ever had

The ruination of my country at Cameron's hands.

Watched Boris Johnson buffoon his way into the hearts of no-one but into a shitty pit of his own making

The labour party tear itself apart for a lack of faith in Corbyn's integrity

All Corbyn has been saying is "This is what we could be".

Everyone else is saying: ' As a nation we have low self esteem, for fuck's sake please help please help please help someone with some integrity'.

EU to fund Brexit and Cameron's move to World Statesmanship.

According to my man in Paris eating croissants and flirting with waitresses the EU has had a whip round and come up with the necessary funds to give Britain the heave-ho pretty damn quick.

£150.00 is the figure being bandied about as the amount that David Cameron is demanding for a speedy exit from his embarrassment.

Cameron of course wants to move on to World Statesmanship PDQ.  Following the snail trail laid down by Tony Blair.

Rumour has it that Cameron and Blair will soon be found hiding in moist ground under the same rock. Cameron has ensured that that rock will not be Gibraltar.

Senile British geriatrics say NO to continence.

114 year old Jan Nieupjur tells me that, when that Farage bloke called in at his care home in Frinton, all he asked him was: 'Do you want to be incontinent'?

Jan told him no he did not whilst dreaming of running naked through a  summer meadow with a beautiful young flaxen haired girl without the inconvenience of his colostomy bag slapping against his belly.

I thought I was voting to get my youth back says Jan. I thought I was voting to get Mandy O'Morford to give me that long ago promised peep at her front bottom.

I now realise that all I was ever going to see was a cunt called Nationalism.

Fools gold.

I know I am a fool
but I do not like you thinking it

I know I am a fool
but I am not the fool you are

I know I am a fool
but the only person I am fooling is myself.

Russel Brand has nothing to say about Brexit.

Russel Brand, you know, the gobshite from the last election. Here he is:




Well he has nothing to say about the forthcoming referendum because he is not promoting a book or tour and has no interest therefore in what is going on in Britain, nor quite frankly, British youth. Until he does have a book or show to promote when he will miraculously have something to say.

Russel Brand is currently snuggled up in a threesome in Los angeles with himself, his penis and his hand.

Erectile disfunction. William Shakespeare manuscript discovered.

Jan Nieupjur writes: I found this written upon sheets of c16th Izal loo paper. It was tucked into a gap in the wall of the crapper behind Anne Hathaway's cottage in Stratford-upon-Avon.


 i hath lost mine own libido out by the gazebo
the lady hath left me
with william d'isfunction.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

anon willy's good now
if 't be true thee liketh a square
lard'd with
macho rumbunction.

mine own libido hast gone
the lady hast hath followed the travelling lamp
gone west
from the f'rmal did rise garden.

i am hath left limp. . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I have translated this into modern English:


I lost my Libido out by the gazebo
she left me
with William D'Isfunction.
..................................................................................

Now Willy's alright
if you like a fight
larded with
macho rumbunction.

My Libido has gone
she has followed the sun
gone west
from the formal rose garden.

I am left limp...
....................................................................................

Notes on the Festival season.

Tipi or not tipi. That is the question.

We went gingerly to Glastonbury in a Zimmer frame of mind.

Now is the wigwam of my disco tent made glorious by donna Summer.

Festival on a budget: Camping without a Sioux.

Daddy. That man is pissing in the Tardis.

The EU Referendum in Swiftian terms.

The more I see and hear of this Referendum shit being bandied about on the interweb the more I realise that it is just national masturbation. Jonathan Swift (were he alive) would probably define us as a nation devided by our preference to be pleasured by our own left or right hand.

Beauty demands nothing.

The beauty of the interweb
is that
ordinary men like me
in dying
may watch videos of
brilliance taken early
by the genius
it harbours
demanding everything destructive

to prove a point.

The beauty of the interweb
is that
ordinary men like me
in dying
may pass comment on
brilliance taken early
by the genius
it harbours
demanding everything destructive

to prove a point

The beauty of mankind
is that
to prove a point
brilliance is quantified by
brightness
not by longevity
nor by hits on youtube
beauty demands nothing.

English Hooligans outperforming the national team at Euro 16.

It is with a great sense of national irony that I can tell you that the English hooligan ensemble have performed way above expectations in France and have completely outshone the National football team.





The English squad management informed me this evening that: 'We are wasting our time trying to compete with the hooligan team, they are more disciplined and better managed all round. We might as well go home. '

A Fifa executive who refused to give his name without a £50 K bung told me that: ' Ingerlands going home, going home.'

A spokesdrunk for the hooligans muttered: 'Drink'.

It will be the first time in the competitions history that England will have finished the tournament without losing a game.

England won the world cup in 1966. Since then the world has refused to give us our ball back.

Why I will not be screaming 'Save Ladbroke Grove Library' quite yet.

As a result of the 'Demo' in April and further posts on social media regarding the demise of our local library I've done some homework : 

Firstly I am told that the library will remain in its current location until the new building is ready. The new library building, around the corner on Lancaster Road will be eminently more user friendly. 

Secondly, while I understand that the idea of a fee paying school occupying the building is noxious to many (especially those who cannot see beyond what they consider social injustice) to my mind it is preferable to the building being demolished to make way for 'luxury' apartments. 

The building does not lend itself to conversion to residential use as it stands. At least with the school leasing the building the building remains and by remaining retains the architectural and historical dignity of the site. The school, fee paying or not, employs many teachers and other staff, who are not overprivileged toffs, and therefore, on that level, is more valuable a tenant than say an estate agents. 

I have been unable to see any plans for the new library proposal so must take RBKC ai its word for the time being. 

Lastly. A library, to my mind, is a collection of books not a specific building. The British Library still exists even though the location changed. 

Ladbroke Grove will not lose its library and for that reason I do not need to beseech anyone to save it.

The Chipping Forecast. W11.

A new arrival on all Saints Road. W11.

They say: A brand new, fish & chip restaurant and take away in the heart of Notting Hill.

Serving the finest quality fresh Cornish fish deliciously fried in beef dripping.

Fish & Chips is a British institution and here at The Chipping Forecast we've searched the caves and coves of Cornwall in order to find fisherman using traditional techniques to land the finest, sustainably caught fish our waters can offer. Each delivery of fish we receive, can be traced back to the boat and to the fisherman who landed the catch (many of whom are pictured on our restaurant walls). We guarantee from hook to Hill within 48 hours!

Our accompanying chunky chips are tripled cooked in traditional beef dripping for an unbeatable taste. Alongside Fish & Chips we'll also be serving popular homemade favourites such as a rich fish pie, salmon fishcakes and prawn cocktail together with a range of seasonal specials.

We're thrilled to announce ex Barnsley House and Village Pub Chef, Graham Grafton, will be joining us as our Head Chef and working his culinary magic in our shiny new kitchen.


I shall be trying it out over the next couple of weeks and will report.

Details HERE

Gun death is the life blood of America.

Rusty  McGlint writes from Lizard Bend Idaho. I don't always agree with rusty. I do on this one.

Tristan, Babs and the boys is fine and having a cross gender twin is a lot easier than it sounds, dressing them ain't the problem it could be.

just a thought:

With American gun crime no one remembers the victims but everyone can name the shooter. This was so in the 60's when I watched cowboy films, no one remembered the dead guys because the dead guys (in Hollywood parlance) were the losers. Hollywood made lots of films about the shooters and glamourised them, they made no films about the victims.... There is no box office in a dead hero we were told. When filmmakers came along who questioned the Hollywood method they were damned for 'UN AMERICAN' activities. All you guys have to do is watch Soldier Blue in order to realise how entrenched America now is in its self destructive determination to suck its own cock with an assault rifle stuck up its arse..

The patients leg. With apologies to G. DuMaurier.

Doctor: I fear you have a bad leg.

Patient: I can assure you that parts of it are perfectly healthy.

I am a pedestrian.

I am a pedestrian therefore I am at the bottom of the food chain
I believe laws are there for all road users.

I am a cyclist therefore I am more important than pedestrians but inferior to drivers
I believe laws are there for all road users bar cyclists.

I am a motorcyclist therefore I am superior to pedestrian and cyclists but inferior to drivers
I believe laws are there for all road users bar motorcyclists.

I am a car driver therefore I am more important than all of the above but inferior to truck drivers.
I believe laws are there for all road users bar car drivers.

I am a truck driver therefore I am at the top.
Laws are there to keep other road users out of my way.

Man stabbed during fight over empty champagne bottle.

A man was superficially cut during a fight over an empty Champagne bottle in Ashby-de-la-Zouche yesterday.



A witness who wishes to remain nameless stated that a scuffle broke out outside 'Bistrot Brusque' in the town centre when an empty Roederer Crystal bottle was spotted in the trash cans. Champagne bottles have a high value in the town where the contents of ones recycling bag is a signifier of ones social status and wealth and locals regularly go through restaurant waste in search of status items in order to place them conspicuously in their recycling bags.

Another witness stated that a Crystal bottle in the recycling bag is the dogs bollocks, elevating the household to footballer or pop-star status.

A kitchen porter from Bistrot Brusque told me that he normally sold the empties to social climbing recyclers but he missed the Roederer Crystal bottle. 'It was worth £5 at least he added, nodding his head in a sadly gallic way.

An Ashby man is helping police understand how the bottle became empty.

The really old should not be allowed to vote.

This European Union referendum is a problem.

if you are under 18 it ain't a problem. You have no say because, even though you are old enough to marry, have kids, join the army and kill people, you ain't old enough to have a say in the society that you are inheriting.

If you are over 70 it ain't a problem because you remember (if you can remember anything) how Britain was great and you could travel around Europe on a promissory note because you was British.

If you are over 80 it is more than likely that all you can remember is your kind nanny and a fondness for rice pudding. You have no right to vote on the future of a country you are shortly leaving whist denying the kids who have to live with it the right to vote.

No-one over 45 should be allowed to vote on the future of Britain.

Anyone over the age of 45 only has self interest at heart and doesn't give a shit about this nation and its children.

Then we bully kids into sending fathers day cards, mothers day cards and shit like that while all we are doing is destroying their future for our own self gratification.

We should be sending our kids apologies for destroying their future.

The referendum should be decided by children. It is their country now.

And don't tell me that cameron and his capitalist cronies care one jot for the future of this country or the future of it's children.

'Boris Bikes' facilitate 72% faster cocaine deliveries.

Statistics released today by the Columbian Board of Trade (CBT) show that since the introduction of the 'Boris Bike' in London home deliveries of cocaine have speeded up.



A spokesperson for the CBT stated that this was important, not so much for the speed of delivery, but more so for the necessity for CBT dealers to make a fast getaway once the customer realised that he had bought 5 grams of petrol flavoured ground aspirin.

Dull Pete, the spokesperson for the Notting Hill coke buyers association said (when the correspondent got a word in edgeways to ask a question):  'Speeding it up with amphetamines might have been better from a consumers point of view. Dull Pete repeated himself eight times before he realised I had left the Cow.

Unspoken grafitti.

I listen to you on the radio
heart racing
in the moments you stop playing
I imagine unwritten poetry.

My time is not wasted writing
what you will  not waste time reading
no time is lost.

I keep my words safely tied down.

Unspoken grafitti on the wall that we are building.

Donut go gentle into that dark night. Happy donuts, Portobello Road.

Hearts sank when a 'Donut' shop emerged from a hole in the wall on Portobello Road a few weeks ago.

  

It opened a week or so ago and far from being a 'Crispy Creme' emporium of american excess it sells made on the premises fresh donuts ranging from plain little things with a sprinkle of sugar which cause no fear of the onset of obesity to concoctions to make a child drool (the Nutella donut is the boys favourite) including a banoffi variety.

 This is not a place to frequent daily but it is certainly the place for the kids Friday afternoon treat. 

I bought a banoffi donut in order to review it. sadly it vanished before it could be photographed.

Banoffi donut

The place is run by happy, friendly people and Judging by the business they are doing is here to stay.

254 Portobello Rd, London W11

A childs guide to lying.

Rusty sent me this from Lizard Bend Idaho. It is written by his oldest boy:



I lie to mummy because it pleases her.
I lie to mummy because she rewards me for my lies.
If I lie about a test result it pleases her to think that I am brighter than I really am and it pleases her to think that my test results are a reflection on her parenting and genes.
If mummy finds out I have been lying she tells me off but she never takes my reward away. Ergo (I'm doing Latin at school) I will be rewarded for lying and, if found out, not really punished in any way other than to be forced to lie and say I'll never do it again.
I'm being encouraged to lie about my lying.

Daddy lies to mummy because it pleases him.
For daddy lies are their own reward.

Daddy lies to me because he is a coward.
He is a coward scared of a seven year old boy.

Daddy is more likely scared of the seven year old boy he once was.
I'm reading Freud. (I'm not really. I lied).

I play the percentage game with my lies
I think I am winning.
But I'm not.
I just lie to myself and believe it whilst destroying all trust.

All trust in me and all trust in the people I lie about.

It is a bit like being God.

10 past 12 at the 7/11 of love.

What's a lonesome girl to do
when she's forgotten the scent of a man
she can't buy it at the cornershop
it don't come in an aerosol can
I get down on my knees and cry
I cry to the Lord above
Oh why is it always 12 05
at the 7/11 of love.

At the dog club the men are barking
at the mall they ain't dogging they're parking
the ornithologists are all a larking
but no-one's larking with me.

I've done al the rodeo's
got fed a load of bull
at the Church social tug of war
the Lord knows I couldn't pull
I get down on my knees and cry
I cry to christ above
Oh why is it always 12 05
at the 7/11 of love.

The scientologists sent me packing
amongst the Moonies men were lacking
the oil men were all off fracking
but no -one's fracking me.

I've done my time at the 5 and Dime
not one man there worth a Cent
I've breakfasted at Tiffany's
but that ain't where the straight men went
I get down on my knees and cry
I cry to  L Ron Hubbard above
Oh why is it always 12 05
at the 7/11 of love.

Why is it always 12 05 at the 7/11 of love.

An open letter to Sadiq Khan.

Sadiq,

There is a Dick Whittington fairy-tale element to your election today.

After years of 'Money conquers all' elitism in London we finally have a mayor who has the ability to work for and with the people who count - not the people who count their money. Please please stay true, fight the demons who will tempt you down a corrupt path.

The streets of London are not paved in gold but in concrete and york-stone and sweat. They are trodden by ordinary people making this city work for each other for ordinary wages. It is the ordinary people who take pride in London, it is their only home, unlike the wealthy who lost sight of the value of home when they chose money as their god.

It is a community.

The wealthy look down from their (gated) citadels in scorn.

We could do with a champion.

Go on........

Pro-Zac is not the answer to London's depression.

I'm apparently reliably informed by Zac Goldsmith that Sadiq Khan is a terrorist sympathiser. Thank Allah for that. we can now rest easy in the knowledge that we will not be targeted by terrorists other than tory terrorists.

It is also good to know that I will no longer be bombarded by pro-Zac supporters telling me what a splendid chap he is.

Zac can go back to his day job as multi-millionaire elitist now.

Even Cameron is celebrating Goldsmiths loss in this election... Goldsmith is apparently too rich to toe the party line and probably thinks Cameron infra-dig.

Memory. I Remember very little of this.

Memory

I wrote this 40 years ago. It hasn't improved in time.

Memory will go.  That is what life is about, the future relies on the past and the past relies on memory and as memory diminishes so the future becomes less…less what, I’ve forgotten.

How I got to Judy’s house I cannot remember. I was 18 and fucked on amphetamines dope and alcohol and looking for a bed. I turned up with a bottle of scotch and a hold all.
She had a terraced house, a husband in prison, a young daughter and a drawer full of drugs. Oh! Yeah she had rats in an aquarium. We drank the whiskey, tried many sorts of her dope and some of her liquid LSD and laughed a lot and laughed a lot more and then she showed me the stairs to my room before showing me her bed: she said you can go up there or stay down here…I was 18, fucked on amphetamines, dope, alcohol, LSD, the pheromones of a middle aged woman and the scent of fear from caged rats. I chose her bed. Less steps to climb. We eventually sublet my room.

We sublet my room to a fat single mother whose baby I often mistook for a pig whilst melting into the soft furnishings on paranoid trips.

For a lot of that time I did not know whether I was toothpaste or cornice moldings or both.

Judy had admirers who would come round and cook her crap meals without knowing that we were shagging in the downstairs loo and laughing and then laughing about that. 35 years later I can I don’t blame her.

She had a Mini clubman, green, British racing green. Fuck... I had to go. The husband was coming out of prison. I could not (would not) fight. We went for a picnic on cleeve hill as some sort of goodbye thing. The child Rosie was with us as we lay under the elephant trees and talked of what might be or might have been. The beech trees were monstrous with bark like grannies elbows and she told me she loved me through a gap in her teeth. I was closer to her daughter’s age than hers.

I went into the woods for a piss, as I stood micturating against a tree I sensed something and ducked; a sock full of nuts bolts nails and screws clouted into the tree just where my head should have been. I managed to wrestle the weapon from Judy’s grasp and force her to the ground. Needless to say she was loud.

Subdued she seemed pleased to miss. I asked her what she had intended and she told me that she wanted to kill me and then write obscenities over my body… She opened her bag, it was full of lipsticks… I cannot remember how this ended. It is true but I cannot remember… I’m alive so she didn’t kill me.

She said she didn’t want me to leave her.

Her husband had been imprisoned for stealing among other things underwear from washing lines. When he was arrested he was wearing it. He had curly blonde hair and a heroin habit. It was 1973 and David Bowie said everything was possible. But I didn’t think a ménage a trios with a middle aged mum and a cross dressing junkie was anything like probable let alone possible.

I may be wrong.

Rusty McGlint on American politics..

Rusty writes from Lizard Bend. Idaho:

Tristan, scuse the french but it is fucking hard being a parent.

Me and Babs have bought this Lesbian Gay Transgender thing hook line and sinker but when it comes to getting little Duke into a dress he says he ain't no girl no matter what we says and when we says that he ain't got no say in the matter he points his AK at us and tells us to turn off that goddamned K.D.Lang rekkid and look at his dick.

His brother Duane is sick of the fighting cos he reckons it messes up his concentration on his embroidery he is doing for his latest frock and can we turn K.D.Lang up and why ain't he got no front bottom.

Babs reckons we should bully Duke into being hetero and Duane into being gay but I say that ain't how the liberals want it. The liberals want us to do contrary to what we want to do and if we do that it makes us liberal.

Babs says that that nice Mr Trump don't want us to do nothing but stay in the trailer and teach the twins to shoot Mexicans.

I said. Babs you is a Mexican.

She said. So shoot me.

How we laughed at that Tristan.

Ginsberg's cougher

I am one of Ginsberg's coughers
I sing in my dreams, sleeping
alongside the woman, who,
dreaming of the truth,
never remembers on waking.

Facebook.

The village pump long run dry
village stocks
ducking stool
plastic sword of damocles
imaginary friends

Imaginary enemies

Insincere like box
soap box
joke box
juke box
poke box

Dunbar's number run amok
ego massage
ship of fools
virtual Achilles heel
bridgeless trolls

Fairground hall of mirrors
tunnel of imagined love
misdirected darts
in a goldfishes back
bearded lady bearded

Non stick glue
abrasive grease
kittens
photoshop photorealism
paedophile paradise

Tomorrows lunch
yesterdays dinner
Fifi's cat
ugly babies ugly babies
ugly babies
pictures in the attic of ugly babies

Sober barflies, drunk vicars, honest liars and lying politicians.

Oh. and me me me me me me.

I will come to call you friend.

Unwelcome guest
pleura squatting
rattling marbles

marbles filched from the attic

Chestcat
of second infancy
breathe deep

I will come to call you friend.

David Cameron admits that he does not benefit from the trust of a single person in the UK.

Cameron came clean today and admitted that no-one trusts him. But he went on to say that: 'Amongst his cronies and peers, no-one trusted anyone so nothing is not as it should be and a corrupt government would be foolish to consider trust to be an important part of it's job fleecing the country.

Interesting Easter Egg hunts.

The postman rang twice the other day. I answered the door and Asked: Why the urgency? He asked if we had a baby in the house and when I said yes he said that's ok then because this parcel is rattling in an urgent kind of way.

It turned out to be a package from Rusty:





A box of Rattlesnake eggs.

There was a note:

Tristan. easter greetings and Eggs from lizard Bend. Idaho.

Babs and me were kinda regretting buying the twins pink AK 47's for their third birthday so bought them  a box of these to compensate.  The boys now spend their time in the trailer eying the eggs, aiming to shoot the rattlers when they hatch before the critters get them. It means that Babs and me can move about a little easier knowing that them AK's ain't aimed at us constant like.

Anyways. Here's a box of eggs for your little one... they make for a mighty interesting egg hunt on a warm spring day.

Rusty.

Thousands of housewives guilty of money laundering (even Mrs. Cameron) shock.

According to documents leaked to me from Panama over the past couple of days It appears that housewives throughout Britain are regularly laundering money accidentally left in trouser pockets. Even the Right honourable Mrs. Cameron has been guilty of the offence.

Tories to legalise cocaine shock.

I am reliably informed by my friendly 'jeweller to the stars' neighbourhood coke dealer that, when he was delivering to the cabinet office yesterday he overheard Cameron and Osborne discussing the legalisation and subsequent taxation of cocaine in the UK. Osborne's objections were, apparently, that it was only going to penalise themselves and was therefore counter to everything they believed in.

Cameron apparently replied: 'Rack em up George and tax the poor'.

Petition fatigue.

Somebody please start a petition demanding an end to on-line petitions. Two or three arrive in my email each day beseeching me to support this, that or the other cause. On social media I am confronted by petition after petition demanding that I sign the fucking things.

All that this is doing is devaluing the whole bloody process of protest. Petitions demanding a change in Government behaviour are pointless, legislation is in place to ensure that petitions may not be filed if they question the government in any way. Many other petitions resemble nothing more than Nigerian scam emails offering a share of millions of dollars requiring laundering. Petitions have become the modern equivalent of the sinister, threatening chain letters of old.

Stop this Now.

The High Street Wars according to Euripides.

All lived in Harmony until Tescos the Greek stole the marketplace with his '3 for 2' offer which pissed off the Trojans no end. Aldi of Troy marched on Tescos with a '2 for 1' deal hidden in the belly of minced horsemeat and all hell ensued.

Back in Brittania John of Lewis got wind of this and marched in stating he would undercut them all or by George he would refund the difference.

Israel dabbled in the melee under the banner of St Michael but could not really compete while brave Woolworth of Winfield shot himself in the foot with a Poundland bow and arrow before he even got off the ferry.

The Vikings from Iceland led by King Ikea remained aloof and stuck to what they were good at while King Harrods looked on smirking while fleecing everyone who entered his kingdom with gold.

Young 'Barter of Online' won it all with his cloak of invisibility and a bogus 5* rating.

Murray Lachlan Young has written a book.

Murray has taken time out from writing and performing in order to put an anthology together. Click on the 'support this book' button and Murray will tell you about it himself.



As a schoolboy I was bored to tears by the poetry I was obliged to digest (apart from Betjeman) It took a visit to the Roundhouse to hear Brian Patten (he published a poem called: 'Tristan waking in his wood panics) in the 70's to spark an interest in the art form and to understand that it is, after music, communication at its best. Murray is, I think, one of the best practitioners of the bardic art (stories well told with gallons of humour, alliteration, rhythm, intelligence and out of the box nous). I am happy to rank him up there with Patten. I bought into this book, not to stick it unread on a shelf and say: 'I know him' but to take it down off the shelf to read to my children in order that they see how much fun poetry can be. Go on, buy one, get one, free your humour ducts of Auden clogs.