I Know You Got Soul

It's been a long time, I shunna left you
Without a dope beat to step to, step to, step to....

Allow me to bring you up to speed:

"We were surrounded on three sides by shattering gun fire. It seemed to me as though the cottage walls would soon come down around us, reduced to little less than a furious, infecting dust that would cloud our vision and make escape through the holler of the bullets nigh on impossible. I saw our only option in the west-facing window. If we were lucky, the fall wouldn't kill us, and we would land with most bones intact. I whispered to Maddox.

"'Maddy, there are two ways out of here. Either we leap from that window holding our genitalia, hoping for the best, or we wait for them to break down our meagre defences and we leave in the cold, suspended animation of death,' - imminent danger always made me feel far more luxuriously poetic than real life had ever afforded. 'Are you with me, my dear, dear friend?'

"Maddox took my cold hand in his smooth, elderly one. 'Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. If only you'd realised sooner.'

"Of course, Maddox wasn't talking about our escape route. His mission had always been to lead me here, to this cottage, to this siege, to this death. Maddox, that quiet, kind old boy, was a phony. A ruddy spy. What a fool I'd been.

"Well, what else could I do? Before he had chance to pull his pistol, I was gliding through the sweet French air, down, down toward the gravel below. I landed, though not awkwardly, in a plume of yellowish dust. I paused for a moment, ensuring I wasn't dead or scattered in bits, before scrambling to my feet at pace, making for the thick shadows of the surrounding orchard."

So that's why I haven't updated for a while, to those of you (one person) who complained about my lack of blog. I hope you're satisfied.

Moving on. I'm back up to full time hours at work now, much to the dismay of my ailing stomach, for which I still have no diagnosis. This does mean, however, that I've been catching pretty much my usual bus home every day and can therefore give you the latest update on the Mr Whitehairblackbeard story. Yay!

For the last three days, The Castrato has ridden my bus. He has now removed the moustache he was sporting whence last I gazed upon him, and now instead has a small purple bruise above his right eyebrow. The mark of a man holding an innocent man with contrasting beard and hair combo hostage? 'Tis so far the evidence would suggest, further strengthened by this days discovery...

The Castrato lives relatively close to me, in fact disembarking the bus just two stops before I do myself. My prolonged absence from work has left me greedy for clues in this ongoing case and today my hunger was partially satisfied. As The Castrato intoned his dulcet, "Thanks, mate" to the bus driver as he left the carriage, I happened to glance out of the window to my right. There, lying in the field where a gaggle of Shetland ponies usually take their fill, was...A BLACK SHOE.

Those of you who have followed my reports as the mystery has unfolded will know how significant this discovery is, especially the vicinity in which the sighting was made - just metres from The Castrato's layer. And this time I was able to photograph the shoe as evidence - see Photograph 1, below.

Photograph 1:


As you can see, it's a typical black shoe, appealing to all.

But here's the really exciting news(!): While I was rummaging through my camera I found a photograph I took of Mr Whitehairblackbeard! Please study it carefully. If you've seen him, you MUST contact me as soon as possible. I'm currently collating my data to take to the police. I think you probably understand how embarrassing for me it would be if I were to make allegations against The Castrato that were entirely unfounded. Please, any information could be invaluable.


Photograph 2:


Thank you for your time.

I am with you in Rockland

Oh, hello there debilitating mental and physical exhaustion, thought I'd lost you for a minute there! But it's okay, you're still here, ruining my life. *smile* What's that now? You'd like me to fall asleep in the bath and almost drown? Why, I don't mind if I do!

Welcome, welcome. Would you care for a hot beverage? I'll put a little milk on to boil while we get down to business.

Firstly, Jamie Oliver, if you're reading this, GET THE FUCK OFF MY TELEVISION. I'm sick of seeing you and your cringe-worthy idiosyncrasies.

My apologies for my absence of late. As you may have read in recent publications, I'm still ill, suffering with debilitating mental and physical exhaustion. It takes me a long time to organise my thoughts at the moment, so I've had some trouble coming up with a good topic for discussion. You know, something as stimulating and relevant as usual.

I'm currently very excited about the release of Howl, a biopic on the obscenity trial following the publication of Allen Ginsberg's EPIC poem, Howl. I was going to go into the intricacies of my love for both the poet and this poem, but every time I tried, I couldn't do it justice. I just suggest that you read it...and feel the immense power of the written word enveloping you, transporting you, changing you.

Goosebumps, folks, big juicy ones. Here's a photograph of Allen that I took this one time. I consider it my homage to a hero.



I'll be looking for someone to go to the film with; all applicants should send a ONE PAGE A4 letter detailing why they think they're suitable for the position as well as any relevant experience they may have. I don't want a formal letter, that just shows you can write formal letters. I want to read YOU.

Anyway, that's pretty much it. I have a whole list of things that I was going to write about, but it's just too...involving.

Here's a pseudo-poem I'm thinking about writing:

Your eyes are like windows into a little shop
that sells chocolates, the likes of which
have never been dreamt of;
where children stand gazing in -
the scene from a movie where the direction
reads, "Act hungry, like dogs";
where an elderly woman sits, darning furiously,
her fingertips hardened to the prick of the needle,
her face set and cast
in a deep orange light thrown out
by the small lanterns that surround her.


Ah, there's the milk. One cup or two?

This One Goes Out to the One I Killed

Yesterday on my way to work I was troubled by something. I wasn't quite sure what it was until I got into Leeds and found my legs carrying me towards the stationary obsessives' paradise, Paperchase. As a self-confessed stationary obsessive, I knew then what it was that had been troubling me.

Having visited Paperchase a few days prior to this troubled state, I remembered that I'd seen My-New-Favourite-Range. I have a My-New-Favourite-Range at Paperchase every few months and I have to own at least one item from My-New-Favourite-Range otherwise a baby elephant will die. And as we all know, for every baby elephant that dies, Satan earns £1 with which to do evil. In other words, it's very very necessary for me to buy new stationary very frequently.

I got myself a big, hardback jotter and a pen that can do SIX COLOURS. Yessssss. I'm going to use these items especially for my blog. I know, I know, these volumes I produce seem like the rambling thoughts of a deranged nine-year-old, but really, I take an awful lot of time to bring you these insights into my life. Plus it's always good to have a hard copy in case computers go AWOL and start eating our hands so we can no longer type and then we die out because we can't make omelettes any more and then an alien race comes to earth and kills the computers with special vaporising guns and the only evidence they have of what life was like for humans are the details as recorded in my big, hardback jotter filled with blog-drafts.

And so to my point: I spent yesterday at work trying my best not to think about My-New-Favourite-Range. All the way home on the bus I didn't even look at what I'd bought. Then it was time to get off.

For regular readers, you'll know that riding the bus is a very traumatic experience for me and that I'm quite specific about where I'm willing to sit. Because it's now winter, my preferences have changed since the last time I mentioned them, but that's another story. All you need to know is that I was sat upstairs. Oh, and because of my mystery illness, I'm extra clumsy at the moment.

So I pushed the bell and went down the stairs, naturally scared for my life. When I got to the bottom there was an elderly man stood there (in this case, elderly means late-60s). I insisted that he go before me, but then he insisted that I go before him. We back and forth insisted at one another seconds on end, until the bus had almost stopped, so I just went for it. As I hurried down the last two steps, my bag, containing my big, hardback jotter got caught. So I pulled. I pulled and the bus jerked to a stop because bus drivers don't understand the concept of "gentle braking". And yes! You guessed it! My bag swung round and hit the elderly man IN THE FUCKING FACE.

Mortified. I walked home feeling like a really terrible person. And managed to convince myself that I'd probably triggered a sequence of events that would lead to the man's death. I had inadvertently murdered an elderly gentleman.

But then I realised why this had happened. I OBVIOUSLY didn't buy enough items from My-New-Favourite-Range, which meant several baby elephants died and then Satan did some evil.

And so the moral of this aimless, fairly boring story: Satan is a shit, do not appease.



(NB: Yes I apologised to the man. And no, I don't think he's actually dead now.)

When the War Came

Hola!

Looking through the blogs of others, I have noticed that it seems to be the "done" thing to tell you all about the things I ate for lunch.

Today I dined with a friend. I had an orange flavoured jelly and my friend had a small man in a ciabatta (see photograph below).



Both of these items were delicious. My friend turned to me at one point and said "This is DELICIOUS!" and I agreed.

After that we went to the haberdashery.

After that we went to a park where we thought we might see Rod Stewart, but we did not see Rod Stewart.

After that we talked about what we would do if we ever grew an very large marrow. I said I would enter it into a competition. My friend said they would probably go to a bus stop with it and hail a bus and get on the bus and ask for a ticket to ride and then while the bus driver was typing on a little machine they would throw the marrow right in his face and the marrow would explode because my friend would have stored it in a warm environment for a week before hand so it was a little bit rotten and then they would get off the bus and then they would run away.

After that we went home.

After that I had a bath.

After that I wrote this blog.

The Product of My Day

Okay, so today I DO have an annoyingly pointless story about my life because I did something other than sit in the house all day feeling sorry for my poor sick tummy, but first I'm going to try to write a really long totally incoherent sentence using words of varying syllables like "kowtow" and "miscreant" just so I can say I've practised writing a little bit today, because isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing everyday, writing and practising long incoherent sentences to prove I won't kowtow to convention like most other waifs seem to do these days, sat there all the time dreaming of being the villain in a superhero movie; a masked miscreant set since childhood on world domination all because their fathers didn't ruffle their hair with a pan-sized palm or kiss their mothers with any sort of detailed passion, thus rendering said villain an emotionally twisted, money and power-obsessed wretch with a hairdo that reflects their inner turmoil? Well, isn't it?

Hmm. Well at least I entertain myself!

Moving on. Today I went out for a little walk. I went out for a little walk to try and build up some strength so I can be better prepared for my imminent return to work. So naturally I walked to the graveyard. It was all sunny and chilly and frosty and one of those really GOOD winter days that's really GOOD and wintery. I took my notebook with me in case any ghosts popped up to tell me their chilling tale. Anyway, I wandered around for a while looking at gravestones, which was actually extremely relaxing. So much so that, for a while, I died and was buried myself. I walked right down to the far end of the cemetery, the place that looked as though no one ever went down there since the paths were entirely covered in thick moss. There I discovered the grave of Alphons Van-Poucke and vowed to one day include him in a novel I'll write about a hapless Belgian spy with a stammer.

And then some bigger boys came with a dog that was black and so I went home.

THE END.

Up There's A Heaven

So here I am, writing m'blog with m'hand, on m'graphics tab. Yeeeeeah, the novelty REALLY hasn't worn off yet! Yay for never getting tired of fleeting obsessions! Oooo oxymoron m'bitch up!

Okay so this is just a quick blog... I don't have any new, annoyingly pointless stories about my life right now. So instead I've got an extra-long, super duper poem to share with y'all!

I hope you like it - feedback from my virtually non-existent fanbase would be great since, you know, this is a tiny segment of my career we're talking about here. And not just that...I'm cutting up morsels of my heart and mind to share with you. The least you could do is buy me FLOWERS every once in a while after forty DAMN years of MARRIAGE and the three BEAUTIFUL children I raised while you were out gambling away their inheritance, KEVIN!

I'm sorry. Sometimes it gets to me... the pressure. It's a lot to bear.

Anyway! Step aboard 'cause here we go!


***POEM REMOVED BECAUSE IT'S IN A COMPETITION, INNIT!***


Sigh. That's it folks!

"Oh-ho. Let me come home. Home is wherever I'm with you."

Just an Excuse...

So guess who just got a new graphics tablet?! ...any number of random people throughout the world, probably. BUT YES THAT'S RIGHT IT WAS ME, I GOT ONE! I've wanted one for ages and now I'm off work for a little while and have mountains of spare cash just lying about the place since I don't leave the house to spend it, I thought I'd treat myself. I also bought Sims 3, Funny Girl and The English Patient by Michael Ondaaaaaatje. But they aren't really the focus of this blog, so don't focus on them. Let's just focus on my brand new graphics tablet and let's all be as excited as I am about it.

Needless to say I've wheeled out MS Paint and have been sat colouring in for a solid three and a half hours. My eyes feel a little bit like raisins, in a really good, but horrifically painful way. Anyway, I've been working on some advice that I will one day give my children...thought I'd share it with y'all first; I feel everyone can probably benefit.

Here we go:

Coaching

Sports
Let's begin with a handstand. It's a simple childhood dream, the perfect handstand.
Hands evenly positioned, legs straight in the air, a sky scraper tottering in
the wind. A good way to enrich the brain with fresh blood to leave you ready to face the world, right?

Wrong.

Already this year, six people have died from handstands. The rush became an addiction. They couldn't stop. They refused to stop. "My life is nothing if I can't handstand!" They invaded playgrounds at night, practising against different walls, swooping down into the crab if they lost their balance so they wouldn't look foolish, silently cursing themselves for missing out on the thrill.

I don't want you to become number seven. I don't want you to die. So handstands are hereby banned.

Parties
Don't look people in the eye, it isn't refined.
Don't shake hands, they'll assume you're poor.
Only eat puff pastry canapés if they're offered. Avoid devilled eggs at all costs.
If you feel a draft at any point, head to the garden. Undress and redress quickly. It'll teach you the value of indoor pursuits.
Don't give your full name, just use your initial - sew it onto as many people as possible. Repetition is king nowadays.
You may tipple champagne but only take coffee as an enema; a pint should do it.
If anyone talks of marriage, make sure you are entirely vexed.

Animals
Catfish are usually John Travolta in disguise.
If they constantly let out whoops of glee, they're probably John Travolta.



That's all for now. I hope my wisdom has not fallen on deaf ears. Woe betide if it has...Woe betide. Betide. Betide.








Betide.