my life as a artist
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the aisles of silly
Sunday 10th June 2007 6:38 PM
This morning went to the car-boot sale at the racecourse with my mum, who bought two singing stuffed toy animals. One was Miss Piggy, but with purple hair extensions, ( which, to be honest, made her look a bit cheap), singing 'I will survive' in the style of Gloria Gaynor. The other was a frog, not Kermit, doing 'Wonderful World' by Louis Armstrong, with a very impressive lip tremble at the end. Both of them made me realise how far I'd come from those lost days of innocence and longing, when the soundtrack to my life was Billy Bass the singing fish.
I bought a sofa (that was slim enough to go through the caravan door) for a tenner, from this bloke who said he was a time-lord. He said he'd only bought the sofa next year and he'd hardly used it, and it was no problem to deliver it. He had a Time And Relative Dimension In Space machine, in the form of a 1982 Fiat Uno, which he said was surprisingly roomy in the back. I told him I was in all day last Thursday, so why didn't he deliver it then?
Me and my mum went halves on a two-for-one deal on seventeen cherry plum tomatoes, while I went whole on a one-for-one deal on twenty-three locally grown strawberries. Triumphant in the knowledge that we had bought forty pieces of red food for less than seven pence an item, we strode confidently on, my mothers proud bosom like the prow of an ice-breaker, cracking a savage zig-zag path through an undiscovered continent of bargains.
I paid two quid for a dark brown candlewick bedspread, to use as a throw for the sofa I got delivered last Thursday. Brown is a very underrated colour. Most basic life-sustaining stuff seems to be brown, like bread, rice, tea, Austin Maxis, monks, porrage, wood and soil, but exciting things come in brown as well, such as coffee, chocolate, whiskey, cannabis, beer and souped-up Austin Maxis. I don't know much about interior fashion but I think brown could be the new red.
I bought a buff coloured pair of 80% linen trousers from a Frenchman called Jean Paul. As I tried to haggle him down to a pound, our exchanges started taking a metaphysical turn, and before long I found myself outlining the plot of a novel about a pair of buff 80% linen trousers and an explosive secret that could rock the Catholic church to it's foundations.
After a brief lunch of brie and rocket salad with 'tarte au pomme' for afters, washed down with an arrogantly fruity Bordeaux claret, we discussed the price of the trousers over a keenly fought but friendly game of boules. I let him win the boules and he sold me the trousers for a pound.
As me and my mum, laden with two score of red fruit and bedspreads besides, made our weary way back to the car, we noticed the time-lord who'd sold me the sofa, sitting in a red 1982 Fiat Uno. He was reading a book and I could just make out the title and author. It was 'La mystere du pantalons crème' by Jean Paul Scribbleur. The next thing I heard was three enormously loud electronic trumpetings, as the Fiat Uno shimmered and faded, and ultimately disappeared, into the mute mystery of another dimension, hopefully, with my sofa.
When we got back to my mum's, I tried on the buff trousers (they're a little too long) and then we ate red food and listened to Miss Piggy and the generic 3-D cartoon frog do their thing. It's a wonderful world, and I will survive.
Posted 6:38 PM | 6 Comments | Permalink
the answer is in the soul
Wednesday 6th June 2007 12:12 AM
Hello faithful blogwatchers… through the cold immensity of cyber-space you've been cyber-flocking like cyber-birds to my cyber-feeder and there's been no cyber-seeds or cyber-crumbs for over a week. What you thought was a cyber-desert was in fact just a cyber-beach, and now the cyber-tide is rolling in…
Oh I do like to be the cyber-sea-side,
Oh I do like to be the cyber-sea,
Oh I do like to scroll along the prom, prom, prom,
Where the broadband plays, tiddly, om, pom, pom!
I'm sorry for the lack of recent nourishment but it's just that I've been in another world this last week. It's the non-cyber world and it's really different there. In that other world there's a lot more liquid. Apparently liquid can't survive in cyber-space, whereas the other world positively gushes with blood, sweat, tears, semen, dribble, wee-wee and John Smith's.
It's a messy place and it's always good to have some absorbent kitchen towels handy. The other world's a lot harder as well. Some of it's made out of metal and it can really hurt. Some of it though, is made out of hazelnut, and although that's quite hard at first, you can crush it down with your teeth and mix it with saliva and it's quite nice.
In fact, one of the best things about the other world is the muesli. In cyber-space, as far as I know, you can only get Alpen, whereas in the other world there's a wholefood shop, called Alligator, where you can buy seven different types of delicious muesli, from attractive human staff who only gush blood, sweat, tears, semen, dribble, wee-wee and John Smith's when they're not serving behind the counter.
The other world is hard and messy and got good muesli but cyber-space is fantastic for wildlife. Yesterday I had a googled woodpecker virtually eating out of my hand…..
So blogwatcher… this is it… this is what you came for…. It's not much, I know… maybe a few crumbs and possibly a seed….. I recommend you eat the crumbs but if you find a seed, I suggest you put it under your wing and take it back to your cyber-garden and plant it in a glazed cyber-pot filled with the compost of your own experience. Tender it, nurture it, feed it with Alpen, and in a few weeks you might produce a sprouting blogwort, one of the hardiest, most beautiful flowers of the arctic cyber-steppes. Happy gardening!
Posted 12:12 AM | 3 Comments | Permalink
did the earth move for you?
Monday 28th May 2007 10:36 PM
In response to one of last week's blogs, Les Miserable writes:
'Big diggers don't have genitals, why dress them in lingerie?'
'When there's so many other things to be getting on with', one might add. Well Les, it's a good question, and one that I'm going to try and answer.
1) Lingerie is not necessarily for covering genitals, sometimes it draws attention to them, or enhances them in some way.
2) Surprisingly, some big diggers do have genitals. The 25-ton CAT 330C excavator has a small willy, just behind the rock-ripper attachment, on certain export models.
3) I feel that out-size lingerie lends an erotic mystery to most earth-moving equipment. Even with it's saucy high lift tailgates and spillboards, it's amazing what a floor-skimming zebra-print negligee, in sheer mesh with ruffle trim, can do for a 35-ton articulated dumptruck.
4) It makes big diggers feel special.
5) It helps the economy. (Pointless things often do.)
Think about it Les, and maybe give it a go. I started with a provocatively placed handkerchief on my lawnmower, and went on from there. Good Luck!
Posted 10:36 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
they say its your birthday
Sunday 27th May 2007 2:26 PM
Yesterday was my nephew Simon's birthday. It was also Bob Dylan's, and apparently, the Buddha's. Bob Dylan was sixty-six, my nephew was, I think, twenty two, and I'm not sure about the Buddha, but if I had to make a guess, I'd say he was one.
Through conscious suffering and infinite compassion the Buddha is beyond desire, so it's always difficult to know what to get him for his birthday. His main interest is meditation, so last year I got him a meditating monk doll, a sort of non-action man, which he played with quite a lot. The non-action man was such a success, that this year I bought him some non-attachments for it.
My nephew, Simon, sings and plays guitar better than me, is better at football, is young and handsome and has sex with attractive young women, so I didn't get him anything for his birthday. Why should I? He wouldn't play with it.
As for Bob, I didn't get him anything either, but it wasn't a naked jealousy thing. He sings and plays guitar better than me, could have sex with attractive young women if he wanted to, but I think I'm a better footballer than him. ( I'm not being arrogant here, but I was top scorer for Totnes Dodo's, I am the special one) Bob hasn't been steeped in the culture of football, and even if he did have any skills, he's bound to have lost a lot of pace by now. Bob could never know the glory of scoring the winning goal against Alne Arthritic, so it's not jealousy.
The fact is, the last time we met, he blanked me. It was in the Wembley arena in 1975 and he was wearing a white suit and a white hat and looked as though he'd taken white drugs. I was on the third row, and I caught his eye and smiled at him, but he just looked at me, as if to say 'Who are you?'
When someone does that to you, in front of ten thousand people, it's really humiliating. I know he was under a lot of pressure that evening, but at the end of the day, good manners cost nothing. He can find me on Google if he wants to apologise, and we'll say no more about it.
I realise upon re-reading this blog that I've told out and out lies, exhibited small-mindedness and petty jealousy, been guilty of delusional self-aggrandisement and been cowardly disrespectful towards a major religion that I know won't hit back, and yet oddly, I've quite enjoyed writing it.
Happy Birthday everybody!
Posted 2:26 PM | 4 Comments | Permalink
the guardian poor on the fouth dimension
Friday 25th May 2007 12:05 AM
In the Guardian today, Oliver Burkeman laments of a book that ' it is usually shelved under Mind / Body / Spirit, along with execrable nonsense about crystals, astrology and witchcraft, which means it is most likely to be bought by simpletons.'
Oliver, or Ollie baby, or maybe just Ol, used to live next door to me when he was a fifteen year old schoolboy. When he was doing work-experience for the York Evening Press I granted him an interview. It was around the time when David Icke was in the news, and I told him that I was the son-in-law of God, but I didn't tell him that I was joking. ( it's a sort of comedy technique) A few weeks later I discovered that he'd believed me and had actually started to worship me.
In the meantime, we'd had a few conversations over the garden wall where I'd talked about the mysterious hidden power of crystals, the universal insights gained from astrology and the resurgent matriarchal roots of witchcraft, in a light-hearted, chummy sort of way. Little did I realise that, based on these conversations and the fevered scouring of the mind/body/spirit sections of York's bookshops, Oliver was building himself a personal cosmology that involved me as a major avatar.
Even though I've now got a beard, I still don't feel comfortable with the role of major avatar, especially if it's one of those sacrificial ones. When I told Oliver that I was only joking about being the son-in-law of God he was devastated. His youthful idealism had been shattered and he felt betrayed and humiliated.
A few careless words, a cheap laugh, a bit of topical material, and a young man's capacity for wonder and humility can be destroyed forever. (although he's probably going through his Saturn return at the moment, so he might get it back again). I've always felt guilty about my part in making Oliver the sort of young man who could write such arrogant bollocks, but now I've confessed it, I feel a bit better.
I'd also like to confess to fantasising about dressing up big diggers, and other earth moving plant, with really big but skimpy erotic lingerie. I think I feel better about that as well.
Posted 12:05 AM | 2 Comments | Permalink
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