my life as a artist
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i am the wind beneath her wings
Friday 29th May 2009 10:56 PM
One of the hens has fallen in love with me, and while it's very flattering it's also rather awkward, mainly because I haven't fallen in love with her. She'd been hanging around the bird table and when I was putting food out I'd sometimes spill seed in my excitement, and I think she's mistaken this for some sort of romantic overture.
She waits for me to come home, and when I'm in the garden re-potting plants or digging, she pecks at my fingers and toes, and sometimes she invites herself into the caravan, and before I can shoo her out, she shits on the rug.
She's an attractive redhead, about eighteen inches tall with piercing mad eyes, and a couple of sore-looking bald patches on her wings, probably caused by a mild case of depluming scabies. However, the mystic homeopath and heavy metal drummer, Thorwald Defleppardson, says that feather-loss can be the result of emotional disappointment, so it's possible that the hen is on the rebound from a failed relationship and I'm just the object of her lovelorn projections.
It's been difficult getting her to understand that her feelings of unconditional love towards me aren't grounded in any sort of practical reality, and more to the point, that they're not reciprocated in any way. Jungian analysis, however, cuts little dash with poultry, and in the end I've had to resort to a lot of vigorous shooing. I've always tried to maintain an appropriately loving relationship with all animals, both domestic and wild, and I find this act of vigorous shooing quite distressing, and with the unpleasant rug incident, it's turned out to be quite a messy business.
Talking of sordid affairs filled with painful squawkings and disappointment, my next gig is at the City Screen basement bar on Friday June 5th as part of a Dylan tribute night, an annual event in honour of the bard's birthday. Blonde on Bob, featuring the Travelling Libraries very own Ry Veeter, will do the songs and I'll wheel out my annually adapted twenty-minute Bob Dylan comedy set.
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end of the blog? I haven't got the Memphis blues again, but I do appear to be stuck inside a mobile-home.
Posted 10:56 PM | 7 Comments | Permalink
goals of enlightenment
Friday 22nd May 2009 12:57 AM
It's been a year since I won the highly-coveted York Corinthians Sunday morning-team Golden Boot award for being the season's top scorer. When people pass me in the street they're usually unaware of the honour, unless I happen to be holding it aloft and kissing it in an act of delayed euphoria, which I've done less and less as the seasons gone on, certainly in public.
The trophy itself is a fabulous, gleaming gold and platinum-studded replica football-boot in mid-strike, tastefully mounted on a polished obsidian base, and is fifth only to a picture of Shiva, a turquoise 'dog of Fo', a Staffordshire figure of two lovers and an angel, and a Damien Shirt tin of Crude Genitals and Coriander soup, in pride of place on the high shelf above the caravan's main picture-window.
Denied a Christmas double hat-trick by the Russ Turner X1 deciding to turn up sober, I only managed to score twelve this season, well short of the nineteen scored by our very own Bulldozer-in-Lycra, the Teddy Bear Assassin, the Bull of Dringhouses, Brian, and so this Sunday at the presentations after the match, I expected to have to pass it back for redistribution to it's new deserving owner.
On Saturday night, after Match of the Day, with an involuntary shudder, I took it down from the shelf and put it in my daringly feminine, beige/brown checked sports bag in readiness for the relinquishment, and filled the fifth pride of place spot with a pot enamelled Buddha.
There is some continuity of theme here as, according to the Pali scriptures, the Lord Buddah himself was quite partial to a kick-about (fu ti). Obviously, it was baobab trees for goalposts, but the Canon states that he was an accomplished goalkeeper, or Guardian of the Threshold, and in my mind's eye I have him as a sort of rotund David James character, but with more compassion and mindfulness.
It's said that the left hand of the Buddah is laid flat and open, and symbolises charity and fulfilment of wishes, while the right hand is raised, not only as a gesture of protection and blessing, but also to parry fierce shots at the near post.
The next morning, after the match, it transpired that our club secretary, Medium Nige had, in a unilateral act of extravagant benevolence, decided to buy a new top-scorer's trophy, and as a consequence it seems that I get to keep the old one. 'Forever', said Derek, and because he's a headmaster, I believed him.
In a deliberate act of humility, I've put the trophy back on the shelf in sixth pride of place. It's one down from the Buddah, but it's one up from a Damien Shirt tin of Adorable Kitten's Pineal Glands.
Posted 12:57 AM | 7 Comments | Permalink
I've got flu babe
Saturday 2nd May 2009 12:29 AM
Recently, while travelling on crowded public transport, I've found that wearing a sombrero and sneezing a lot generally guarantees me a seat all to myself. I don't expect this situation to last long because either a) everyone will be dead or b) the whole thing will fizzle out to make way for the next media terror-fest.
In 2004 the same media was predicting 150,000,000 world-wide deaths from bird flu, and in preparation the British and US governments ordered 80,000,000 doses of a vaccine with the strange name of 'Tamiflu'. It sounds like something Barbie might catch if she was having too many late nights out with Ken. I think if I'd invented a vaccine, I'd call it something a bit snappier, like Maxine. Yes, Maxine the vaccine. It don't matter what you got, she cures the lot, she hits the spot, she's real hot, give her a shot!
Roche, the pharmaceutical company headed by Ken Barlow from Coronation Street, possibly, sells Tamiflu at $100 a shot, 10% of which goes to the company who designed it, Gilead, whose major shareholder and previous chairman is none other than the ex-US Minister of Offence, Donald Rumsfeld. I'm not suggesting anything here, of course, but in the words of Donald himself,
'Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know'
I know that I know that a known known for me is that I don't trust Donald Rumsfeld or pharmaceutical companies. I'm aware that 'conspiracy theorist' is a pejorative term within the Murdoch/BBC axis of truth, but after a certain amount of googling and reflection, both sober and completely smashed, I'd have to admit to being one. It's the same pleasure as doing crossword puzzles, except it's a bit scarier and you're unlikely to win this year's edition of the Chambers etymological dictionary.
As Hitler once noted, it's the biggest lies that are easiest to get away with, so I tend not to bother with the smaller conspiracies. There's a popular one doing the rounds at the moment that claims that Nigella Lawson and Russell Brand are actually the same person. It's fair to say I've never seen them on the same telly programme together, and as my mum says, 'they both think they're an ice cream and everyone wants a lick', but even if it turns out to be true, it's a mild diversion at best.
Of course a minor conspiracy always looms larger when it's on your own doorstep, or in my case, in my own garden, and I'm glad to say that the case of the disappearing fat balls has finally been solved. It wasn't a squirrel, and it wasn't Al Qaeda as Mrs Abercrombie said it was, but instead turned out to be a crow. I saw it do it. Mrs Abercrombie thinks the crow might be working for Al Qaeda, but I suspect it's more likely to be working for the squirrel.
Posted 12:29 AM | 9 Comments | Permalink
