my life as a artist
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human racecourse
Sunday 6th May 2007 10:04 PM
Yesterday morning went to a car-boot sale with my mum. I bought an Ecuadorean cardigan for £3, an outside TV aerial for £1:50 and a 'powerfull hair-clipper for the hole family' for 50p. Last night I invited the 'hole' family round to enjoy the newly-found high-definition pictures on my television. While they were enjoying the individual bristles on Wayne Rooney's five o'clock shadow, I shaved all their heads with the 'powerfull' hair-clippers, and so they wouldn't feel the cold, I cut the Ecuadorean cardigan up into 6" squares and stuck them onto the tops of their heads with blu-tack. My mum's square had a chunky wooden button on it, right in the middle, and it looked really jazzy, so she says she's going to keep it on until her hair grows back a bit. Now I know it works, I might tidy some of the chickens up.
Posted 10:04 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
I dug duggleby
Friday 4th May 2007 10:50 PM
When I was 20, in 1977, I thought that the world was going to end in ten years. I still believe it.
'….lip-stick shaped tube things continue to rain and cause screaming pain, and the arctic stains from silver blue to bloody red…'
That was Trevor Macdonald on News at Ten, singing a Jimi Hendrix song , while we looked at pictures of Mogadishu burning. He's got a surprisingly smooth Sam Cooke sort of voice, not entirely appropriate for a Hendrix song, but with Paxman tootling on his Stratocaster in the background, it sort of worked. As pictures of the embattled capital rolled on, Trevor and Jeremy segued seamlessly into 'Someone's house is burning.'
Paxman's fingers blurred up the fretboard… 'take it to Westminster Bridge man!' whispered Trevor appreciatively. When the normally avuncular Trevor got to the lyric,
'... I asked my friend, 'where is that black smoke coming from?' He just coughed and changed the subject, and said, I guess it might snow some..,' Paxman hit the wah-wah pedal and howled in a jagged storm of electronic ecstasy. It was the best News at Ten they've had on for ages.
Even though my mum once threw herself under the king's horse in the name of universal suffrage, I failed to vote in the local elections. I feel a sense of shame when I consider her gentle, hoof-scarred face. I might get her a KFC mums-night-off bucket.
Talking of buckets, (my most recent phrase, and possibly my next album), I'm getting my garden together. It will be the eighth wonder of the world, the Sitting Buckets of Babylon, and will be my trailer-trash Eden. I'll try and work in harmony with the prevailing terrestrial, solar and astral energies, whenever possible, but just in case, I'll dig some of Mark's donkey poo in as well.
I like to dig Radio 4 when I dig the garden and yesterday I really dug Vincent Duggleby on Money Box Live. He was singing a Steve Miller song, and Gordon Brown, who was taking time out from the arrogant pipsqueakery of politics, was giving it big licks on a telecaster.( Money Box Live is so much better than Money Box. Money Box seems half-dead in comparison). Vincent's singing voice had a surprisingly powerful rasp to it, not unlike Howling Wolf or Captain Beefheart. I like to think that Gordon was smiling as he dug Duggleby's words.
'You-oo-oo-oo, run for the money,
You don't even know about wild mountain honey'
Posted 10:50 PM | 0 Comments | Permalink
doolittle did little today
Thursday 3rd May 2007 11:34 PM
'Look!.. I respect you. I want you to be free and to express yourself but this is no life for you. We can't live together in this caravan. You're the outdoor type. You're very beautiful in your own way, but ultimately you're irritating, and sometimes your disgusting. When I came in just then, you spat on that cake deliberately, externally digested it, and now you're sucking it all up.'
Because I live on my own, and it's nice to chat, I spend a lot of time talking to animals and insects. Being a vegetarian I get along with chickens and cows quite well. It's often difficult to find areas of common interest but last week I borrowed the DVD of 'Chicken Run', bought some hemp seed, and invited the chickens round to the caravan to chill. Some of the bantams became distressed during the action scenes and there was shit absolutely everywhere, but it was a great night.
The cows, two Belgian blues, mother and daughter, are very self-contained, almost aloof, but occasionally they amble over to chat. They like me to tell them of my time in India and about their exalted status within Hindu culture. Last week I was stroking the mother, over the fence, and we talked of our hopes for Manchester United in the second leg in Milan. She told me that one of her cousin's was Rio Ferdinand's sofa.
Abi, the sheep-dog asleep-dog, has the kind eyes of a saint and is a hundred million dog years old. We talk of love and rabbits. Poppy is young, fond and foolish and I tell her propaganda stories that involve patience and calm being fabulously rewarded. So that she doesn't feel patronised I talk to her about rabbits as well.
The rabbits themselves are very poor conversationalists. They talk extremely quickly and nervously, and always about sex, and just when they're getting to the good bit, they see a dandelion and hop off.
Birds are better listeners. Yesterday there was a chaffinch sitting on the fence, just outside the window. About fifteen yards directly behind the chaffinch, in the field, was an old English bantam hen. This created the optical illusion of the birds being the same size. (bit like the sun and moon). When I explained the surreal and comedic effect of my perspective to the chaffinch he started larking around, pretending to mount the chicken. I mentioned it to the chicken the next day but she hadn't got a clue!
Now we're into May there's a few more insects around. I get on with bees and beetles but I find mosquitoes and wasps a bit aggressive. To be honest, I try not to talk to insects too much , because it can make the winter seem a bit lonely.
Posted 11:34 PM | 0 Comments | Permalink
may day may day
Monday 30th April 2007 11:30 PM
Tonight is Beltane Eve. I went to Tesco's this morning and got some strap-on deer antlers from the pagan ritual section. Went to the in-store café, the Sticky Web, and for 99p had a breakfast of egg, chips, tomato, potato omelette, fried bread, beans, hash brownies, mushrooms, veggie sausage, toast and coffee ('it's almost a meal in itself.' As Hovis Presley would say)
I haven't arranged anything but I'm hoping a few beautiful, wild women will come round to the caravan and light a fire, and we'll all dance round it and then I'll put my Tesco antlers on and we'll go to the woods and engage in vigorous and unrestrained sexual shenanigans. If they don't show up, I'll probably watch championship snooker with Ray Stubbs. (he presents it, I'm not going round to his house or anything)
Even with the possible added attraction of watching the snooker at Ray Stubbs's house, I think most people would prefer robust, outdoor, sexual congress. Caught up, as we are, in the primal surge of vernal desire, snooker offers little in the way of erotic release. During the cueing action there's sometimes a certain amount of thumb-forefinger frottage going on with the symbolically obvious cue, and sometimes there's a bit of kissing between the balls, but you wouldn't call it unfettered sensuality.
It's nearly midnight and they're still not here. They must have got caught up in traffic. Luckily, I've saved the receipt for the antlers. If I take them back to Tesco's and tell them that they become unstable when I'm rutting, I'll probably get my money back.
Posted 11:30 PM | 1 Comments | Permalink
red sauce
Friday 27th April 2007 1:34 PM
Last night did the microgeneration gig in Harrogate. It wasn't The Adelphi, as I'd thought, but The Majestic, which from the outside wasn't majestic at all, only very big. It would have been more truthful to call it The Very Big.
The toilet ( or 'the shitter' as Kate Middleton's mum refers to it), was so posh that it brought to mind the words of Peter O'Toole. 'It makes your knob look shabby'
It was an awards dinner and most of the blokes were suited, except for one magnificently organic individual, sporting a rainbow jumper and a free-range beard. The women were mainly wearing their everyday clothes, but with bits of negligee sewn on. Every course of the three-course meal was dribbled over with a bright red sauce (raspberry 2 tomato 1 (half-time 1-0))
I did a bit of patter and a poem about bicycles and snag my snog about climate change… I think I was slightly less compelling than the pudding, which was a raspberry cheesecake, so no shame there, then. Got home in time to release the bread from the bread-machine before it got soggy on it's own sweat. (my grandfather was a baker and swore on the prophylactic benefits of drinking a pint of bread-sweat every day) (he died when he was 24 of acute bread-sweat poisoning)
Despite my culpability by association with death and destruction in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and other places, I managed to really enjoy Manchester United versus AC Milan on the telly on Wednesday night. It wasn't just the sublime first-time passing and individual creativity of Kaka, Ronaldo, Rooney et al, it was also the added appreciation of forty years of footballing soap opera that is Manchester United…. Rooney, Giggs and Ronaldo,…Best, Law and Charlton… Derek, Wobbly Bob and Me…..
Posted 1:34 PM | 1 Comments | Permalink
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