Respect.

We are more relaxed with people we do not respect.

We just do not make any effort.

Unless it is a psychopath with a knife...

Then we sit up, pay attention and wonder how we got into this in the first place.

Suddenly the pub seems welcoming if only for the relaxed atmosphere advertised on the A board.

Holy communion, cocaine and showbiz.

Tristan called in late this evening. He'd had a long day, we opened beers,opened mouths and opened hearts.

The letter to Cynthia is still a fresh bruise.

Tristan had spent the afternoon as an extra on a shoot with Marc Henri, a Belgian friend. He spent three hours being fed the body of Christ by Charles Dance in a local church. Thank god the body of Christ ain't fattening; there would be no Catholic supermodels... All those outrageous confessions lost forever.

Marc Henri asked Tristan to look more serious. He tried but when Charles intoned: 'The body of Christ and if you believe that you will believe any thing' Tristan lost it somewhat...

Oh the wacky world of showbiz eh!

Tristan had then gone on to a party in the west end, in a private members club. He said it was all too well scrubbed. There were speeches however; the restaurateur mentioned his restaurants and the BBC guy mentioned his producer.

One overheard conversation of note though:

Her: 'Do you want a line of cocaine?'

Him: 'You know, I can't be bothered'.

Suggests the drugs ain't working so well.

This reminded Tristan of something he overheard outside the Cow the other night: Three eurotrash guys were discussing where to go next. One said: 'Let's go to the Electric and see if there are some cock teasers around'. Obviously a sign that they are doing too much virtual sex. In my day you avoided cock teasers.

You do not need to make it up around here.

Oh and by the way. God couldn't get Tristan into a church but the movies could.

The film is called Fatherly love and I will naturally review it when it is released.

Election nonsense.

Hugh Grant was in the pub tonight. a friend tapped him on the shoulder then went off and voted Conservative. This sadly set the tone for the rest of the evening.

Whatever happened to the Nick Clegg X factor?

I cannot be bothered to sit up for any more anticlimax. I shall no doubt awake to a hung parliament scenario which in turn will lead to another election soon enough.

The TV coverage is farcical. Especially the BBC CGI obsession.

The cock ups at polling stations smack of third world elections.

Britain... Good grief.

Xenia.

At last the Muse. http://tristanssecretsofmagic.blogspot.com/

The window sill above my desk.

Passport

Wristwatch; gift from Mel, reminder of happy times

19th Century penknife

Pebble with a hole in it

Large red die

Piece of obsidian; touchstone and muse, Apache tear, Lapis Obsidianis.

Silver ash tray

Rose tinted glasses

12 bore shotgun cartridge

A silver sixpence

Pair of Victorian dolls eyes

Silver spoon

Heart shaped padlock

Ruby cuff links

Mother of pearl collar studs

All the essentials

Man stuff.

Ha ha.

Sitting in the Cow tonight, just chillin with the cool guy and shooting the breeze when my eye was caught by some Japanese packaging.

Oval ice moulds for whiskey drinkers.

So we got to talking, the cool guy, the owners of the oval ice cube makers and me and I drew these conclusions:

What broke the ice? the ice maker. Coldly ironic.

I want my woman to be unblemished by my behaviour. I am the pencil with eraser at the end.

How a man maintains his mystery is in itself a mystery.

Of course I shit on my own doorstep every morning... Where else would I do it?

What colour eyes do i have? I don't know. I'm scared to look.

and are there ice makers on ice-breakers or do they go out to chip off lumps of ice from the passing floes to slip in to their vodka's?

And then get the Japanese to shape the shards into ovals.

when they are not killing whales... for science.

Boy the Japanese know how to work this planet well.

But they make a mean oval ice cube maker. And then wrap it up in unnecessary packaging which we will send back to China to be turned into hoodies... What goes around comes around.

Kad Achouri-Mi Negra

Ethics and dialysis

When we separated she decided to keep a number of my possessions. I asked her for them but she said NO!

I told her that it was theft but she said:

When a man comes to live with me in this flat he moves in under my terms and he renounces all property rights.

Where there are no property rights there can be no theft.

She then went on to say that If I loved her as I said I did then it stood to reason that I would want her to keep those things as they improved the quality of her life and therefore increased her happiness.

I guess I can live without my dialysis machine.

Led Zeppelin Since I've Been Loving You 1973

Tristan sends me this link. he says: I was a teenager then, cool times. Ginette, a farmers daughter used to ride over to meet me half way in a wheat field. She'd hitch her horse to a hedge and we'd make crop circles.

Small ones but crop circles all the same.

Which leads me to believe that all those big crop circles are just evidence of Massive alien teenagers fucking in our fields.

One eyed Marxist Eurotrash.

A wet cold bank holiday Sunday... Just the thing to keep the Eurotrash away from the Westbourne.

Time for a beer over there then.

It's cool. You get Marxist doctrine wrapped up in a hip cool bar staff kind of way as if this generation of youngsters were the only ones. I was young once, I was like that, boy was I cool too.

Under the outside heaters that are killing the planet for your children ( but fuck it, who cares, you ain't got children yet) a one eyed woman mesmerised us as perhaps a cobra in profile might mesmerise.

It is hard to take a one eyed cobra seriously. Even Buddha knew that.

Kit said: She is gorgeous and look she has an eye patch and it has sequins on and everything and she is gorgeous and she moves as if everything is as it should be and she moves like a thoroughbred racehorse she moves like a supermodel.

Later, much later, I asked her about the loss of her eye; didn't it ruin her chances as a model?

She said: 'On the contrary. when I first approached the agency they told me that there were plenty of perfect models out there, we were ten a penny, common as anything. they said what you need is a fault, a defect, a flaw... I did not have the courage to cut my leg off so I compromised and wore this eye patch. I have not looked back since. Not on the left side anyway.'

Can you see your way to coming back to my place. I said.

No. she said.

Not on either side.

http://thewestbourne.com/

Notting Hill, nostalgia and bollocks.

An obsession with nostalgia is not a healthy thing.

Notting Hill, and especially the Portobello Road area seems obsessed with nostalgia and all things 'retro'. Forward thinking is frowned upon unless it involves the creation of some kind of twee 'heritage experience'. This will result in the area becoming a ghastly tourist ghetto filled with souvenir tat and crap fast food which will have no relevance to the lives of the local population and will kill the real market. Look what happened to Camden.

Instead of creating a crass shrine to the social kitsch we should be weaving strands of our history into something new and forward looking.

The punk thing appears to be the be all and end all right now but this infatuation will be as ephemeral as punk itself. Fads come and fads go and this my friends is just a passing phase which will be replaced soon enough.

It is also sad to see grown men salivating over memories of a short period of rebelliousness in their pasts, this sort of nostalgia should be safely locked away in the attic (next to the dressing up box) only to be brought out on Fathers Day.

The nasty habit of protecting street art with plexiglass is in itself nothing more than the enshrinement of society's self loathing; where is the next generation of disenfranchised youth going to express it's discontent when all the available wall space is dedicated to Banksy's (the Bono of street art) self congratulatory commercialism.

What is wrong with going forward? Only drunks and lunatics walk backwards.

Never mind the bollocks eh!

Insomnia.

How wonderful insomnia is for the happy. Or those in love or on a creative jag.

Those nights when sleep retires graciously allowing cherished 'extra time' for good behaviour and laughter, loving or just thinking.

Wearilessly.

Architectural weather.

Torrential rain hammering on the flat roof above my head.

A wall of sound. Or is it a roof of sound.

Architectural rain whichever way you look at it.

Makes me think of that house that Frank Lloyd Wright built; Falling water I think it was called.

It was so damp that the owners referred to it as rising water.

Moist architecture.