Taurus Trakker. Auto Gigs.

Taurus Trakker, Martin Muscatt & Allison Phillips along with Wigsy* on bass (they have had more bass players than Spinal Tap) are THE local band. Before this shitshow Coronavirus started they could be seen and heard often in the neighbourhood (as well as further afield), especially in Mau Mau; a bar on Portobello Road, the last of the real live venues round here. Mau Mau closed a few months ago for refurbishment, whether it ever opens again is now very much in the air but I was told that it would only be featuring DJ's with their dansettes. Who knows.

The band have started playing live gigs in their car during the crisis. They are 20 odd minutes of pure joy, fun and rock & roll. It is streamed live on facebook HERE Catch them, it is well worth it.


The bands website is HERE

Bandcamp thingy HERE

I could tell you more about the band but it is all on their website in glowing technicolour. Their CV is impressive.

I'll update this in a day or so.

*Wigsy used to run 'Loco'; an often chaotic weekly music pub thing. The scene of many of my poetry intermissions. See earlier blogposts.

Notable dates in History. !2th April 2020 Dom Cum Dur.

On April 12 2020:

My 65th birthday

Dominic Cummins' wife's birthday

Dominic Cummins whilst suffering from the Coronavirus drives his wife and child 30 miles each way to Barnard Castle to 'test his driving skills and eyesight'. What a curious and thoughtless birthday present for the missus, a potentially lethal drive whilst suffering from the virus and no doubt pilled up to the eyeballs. Surely one tries out this kind of thing alone in order to protect the lives of one's loved ones.



I spent the day, like many others abiding by the lockdown rules set by Cummins & co in order to protect myself, protect others and help the NHS, missing friends and family and missing the glorious sights of Barnard Castle.

If I were a conscience I know who's conscience I'd rather be...

Borth. The end of it.

Be quick my aching feet
and rid this place of me
flat matt black smear of sullen land
wedged between rugged beauty
and liquid gun metal sea

the only road a stair rod of leaden hopelessness
finialled with village namesigns
umbilical from way in
giving life to a way out
that veers off, set square true
between graph paper fields of
itchy footed mobile homes
rooted in their own unhaphazard nightmares.
Towards a horizon beckoning relief

Borth beach slate grey
skid mark on the unwashed underpants of Wales
caught between a hard place
and unforgiving sea
grey upon grey upon grey upon grey
populated by innocent children, whom, having seen no better
assume that this is what life is and
gaggles of Whistler's Mothers;
arrangements of grey on black.

the tides are bullied in

hang around like a bored teenage
goth dreaming of Whitby
on his last family holiday ordeal...

then race away with glee

Of all the beauty of this Principality
what brings me here to this
to triage at the waiting room of romantic health tests
sitting, beach benched, uncandyflossed
as you walk out into the limp bara lafwr mor.

Watching and willing you to keep going
Knowing the prognosis to be terminal.

Knowing that I no longer want you in my life
nor me in this unhappy place.

That Johnson Cummins conversation in full.

Many thanks to Andrew Ryser Szymanski for this:


BJ: "I'm sorry Dom, but you know I've got no alternative. This is going to bring the whole administration down. I'm afraid I've got to let you go".
DC: "No you haven't fat boy. You know I've got the full file on you. Everything. The lot. Do you think I didn't know this moment wouldn't come one day? Just call it little me taking precautions".
BJ: "You wouldn't. Surely you couldn't sink that low. I'll deny everything. That's bloody treason".
DC: "Your choice, fat boy. Less than 6 months from hero to zero, my little Churchill.
BJ: "But you just can't. I'll deny everything".
DC: "I've got it all fatboy. Photographs, emails, corroborating statements. You're toast fat boy".
BJ: "Look Dom. Be sensible. We can spin this. I'll make a public address. Greatest regret at losing you and all that, doctor's orders, ongoing condition post Covid forcing your brave resignation. Heroic service re Brexit, possible knighthood. How's that?"
DC: "Do you want to see these emails and photos"?
BJ: "OK, OK, I'll tell 'em you did nothing wrong and have my total support. I'll tell Baker and anyone else making trouble that they're finished. I'll do that today. You the boss, Dom, baby".
DC: "Excellent Prime Minister. A man just has to know his limitations".

Boris' Coronavirus advice (In parentheses).

Work in progress...


Gonna get up in the morning
Gonna take a drive up north
to see my dead dad in Durham
or my gran in Perranporth (weather permitting)

Boris says it's fine by him
(for I went to Magdalen* too)
Boris says don't do what I say
Boris says doo be doo be do (don't bogart that joint)

Boris says cut me a line
says hey man bring out the pot
Gotta persuade the country I'm high on drugs
before my career is shot (got any downers?)



*True fact.The rest is fiction.

Peter Rachman's library steps.

Mein Kampf:- Adolf Hitler
10 steps to a better body:- Charles Atlas
On Narcissism:- Sigmund Freud.

The Dominic Cummins Coronavirus trip inconsistencies.

So far I am able to ascertain that the following statements are true:

Cummins is not telling the whole story. No surprise there.

Mrs Cummins did not tell the truth in her Spectator article of 25th April regarding her and her husbands Virus experience.

Grant Shapps defended Cummins' actions before even talking to Cummins or ascertaining the true facts.

The Government described stories of further Cummins breaches of the lockdown rules as 'Innacurate'. Not 'false' or 'untrue'.

Cummins must go but Boris must be saving that until he has some nastier news to hide.



to be continued

Transport of delight.

I'm going to heaven in a handcart
I'm going to Dedham in a wain
I'm going to Paris in a tumbrel
there to meet my darling Louisette.
I'm going to Nashville on the last train
to Frisco on a street car named desire
having crossed America in a Conestoga
with Cat Balou, but have not set out yet.

I'm going to a fire in a Green Goddess
I'm going to church in a yellow Rolls Royce
I'm going to Alexandria in an aeroplane
with John Mills, to drink an ice cold beer.
I'm going my own way with Mick Fleetwood
I'm travelling light with JJ Cale
I'll send you postcards from each destination
All saying: 'My love, I wish that you were here'.

Cummins Durham Coronavirus saga.

I wrote a silly ditty on the subject of the Cummings idiocy:

Kids, stay home, stay mum about Dad.

Play candy crush saga on your mum's iphone

while she's drunk amid pots and pans

not Covid cruise saga on Dad's spy phone

as he drives up to Durham to Gran's.

I sent it to the conservative party fb page. Their reply is priceless.

Extra Bank Holiday announced in UK.

The UK Government has announced that an extra Bank Holiday will be created later in the year in order to give weary Brits a day off after months of days off.

It will be named All Virus' Day.

Street parties will be compulsory for all UK residents save immigrant workers and their families who will be obliged to service the nation for the day prior to fucking right off to where they came from. Priti Patel will be excluded from this condition.

Yellow flags and bunting will be flown to signify both the Prime Minister's cowardice and the state of quarantine that the entire country will be obliged to live in until the Chernobyl environs are safe for habitation.

It is hoped that the day will kick start the second hand spam industry as well as provide a use for  High Streets, empty since the failure of all retail outlets throughout Britain save Poundshop and Greggs.

Pentimento.

If asked: Should he have the opportunity
to live his life over again,
what would he paint over,
what would he change?

He'd say: Nothing.
Despite the pain, the hardship, the mistakes.
Nothing,
that life brought me here
to what and where I am now.

Grateful for the memories
content and at peace with my demons.

The ripening of the pods.

It was a glorious day, one redolent of impossible childhood memories. I took the old dog for a mutually laboured stroll on the heath, each of us wheezing, lungs rattling, ebb tide on shingle.

We stopped to rest on a well remembered bench, not one of the popular seats on the hill frequented by  crowds but a shaded seat on the path to Ken wood beside a strand of enormous beeches with their elephant skin bark, pock marked with the initials of generations of lovers, the ground felted with a thick layer of beech-mast. A majestic stand of trees, one of nature's cathedrals.

As the old dog panted in the shade of the bench a man a little older than myself approached and seated himself. We traded good-days. He placed a blue and white canvas bag at his feet then opened it, removed a Tupperware box.

Opening the box he proffered it  and said: 'Have a broad bean'.

The beans were peeled and coated in mint sauce. I told him thank you, took one and added: 'I can only eat them peeled'.

'Me also'. He said with a sigh. I sensed that there was more he wished to tell me so I presented the opportunity by saying: 'Go on'.

He looked at me, smiled then started his tale:

'In my youth my parents and I lived on a farm in Kent, an idyllic place, surrounded by oast-houses strawberry fields, cherry orchards and hop gardens. In a cottage beside the un-metalled lane to the village lived the farm manager, his wife and their daughter Tilly. Tilly was tall, as tall as I and had a jumble of perpetually errant golden hair. We became good friends, we went to the little primary school in the village and walked there together daily. We explored the surrounding countryside, sometimes walking miles, chattering away. I spent a good deal of time at her home, in the kitchen with Tilly and her parents or in the vegetable garden.

One summer, quite early in our friendship, she offered me some broad beans, the first of the season. She was sitting, podding them at the kitchen table. I told her, rather precociously, trying too hard to impress, that I could only eat broad beans that had been peeled by a virgin princess.  She laughed, her parents eyebrows raised, then soon handed me a small bowl of peeled broad beans. She added a dollop of mint sauce.

This became something of a ritual each summer upon the ripening of the pods. My virginal peeler of beans. My accomplice in dreams.

Years passed, we moved on to different secondary schools but remained close friends. Met daily.

Just before my fifteenth birth day tragedy struck.

Tilly's mother was diagnosed with a tumour. It was savage, voracious and quick. She died three months later and everything changed.

Tilly's father became withdrawn and unwelcoming, his clothes dirty, he smelled of whisky and tobacco. He didn't actually chase me away but Tilly and I chose to meet elsewhere. In the barn when it rained; the beech hanger behind my house or her garden in good weather where she would innocently, knowingly, peel me broad beans. She changed too, less talkative, less unbridled. Sadness crept in.

The following summer we sat in the garden podding broad beans. She said my name, I looked up, she told me in a foreign voice and with full eyes  that she could no longer peel my broad beans. She ran then, ran into the house and I walked the quarter mile home. Telling myself I was confused but I was not confused, just sad, angry and disappointed. I did not see Tilly again.

A few days later a rumour spread through the village quicker than the tumour that took Tilly's mother. Tilly and her father had done a moonlight flit. I went to the cottage, it was empty. The owner of the farm called in at our house to ask if we had seen them. Apparently they had left one night, left most of their belongings. Had vanished. No forwarding address. Someone from social services visited to ask if we knew where they had gone.

Since then I have had to live with my guilt. I knew what was going on but said nothing, did nothing. I was afraid of the grown up enormity of it all. I should have told someone, anyone, or confronted him, done something.

I have trawled telephone directories ever since.

All I have of her are memories of broad beans'. He pointed at the beeches. 'They remind me of those days'.


He proffered the Tupperware box again, I took one, then he closed it, placed it back in his bag, stood up, doffed his hat. We said goodbyes.

After a few steps he turned, stood for a moment as if deep in thought, then said:

'I should have killed him you know'.

Turned and walked away..

Coronavirus nonsense for children of all ages.

Ware Container

Ice cream for breakfast

porridge for luncheon

elevenses in the afternoon

all day sprinkles to munch on.

Fruit soup for dinner

more ice cream for supper

sherbet for a late night snack

I keep it in a tupper

ware container.