The First Of Far Too Many

Truth, as we all know, is the first casualty of war.
Aeschylus, the father of tragedy, taught us that much.
But in terms of The Great War 1914-18, the first British casualty
was actually a young golf-caddy from North Finchley called John Parr.
John Parr was born and lived just up the road from me, and chose to lie
about his age in order to meet the minimum requirement for enlistment.
He was only 16 when he joined the 4th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment
and was assigned the role of reconnaissance cyclist.
On Friday August 21st 1914, John Parr found himself
on patrol in the village of Obourg, north east of Mons
and just over the border into Belgium. And it was there that
he encountered an advance unit from the German First Army.
It is believed that 16-year-old John Parr remained behind to hold off the enemy,
whilst a colleague returned by pedal-power to report to their superior officers.
At dawn the next day, the British army fired
their first shots in anger on the Western Front,
and young golf-caddies from far and wide
began to fall like dominoes in
their hundreds and thousands.

St Symphorien Military Cemetery:
the final resting place of Private John Parr

There's No Taste Like Home

I'm an old man. I like old man's pubs.
The Holly Bush in Hampstead is one such place.
Built in the 17th century and tucked away on the
outskirts of the King’s old hunting grounds,
she offers warm respite from windswept Dickensian evenings.
Her wood panelling all dusky and varnished.
Her ceilings of decorative pressed tin.
I seek succor in her crannies and in her nooks.
And in the taste of my Homeland
which she gracefully carries on tap.
Nut brown in colour, and still brewed
in a steam-powered pagoda-style tower
on the North side of the Cotswold Hills,
Old Hooky is a sacred beer, made from the
full-bodied and fermented blood of
Arcady’s Christ-like Lord Of The Hops.
To drink of it is to summon up an ancient
topography of gently rolling pastures and
rich red soil toiled upon since time immemorial.
I give my thanks to the yeast and to the mash tuns.
To the thatch and the checkered daffodil and the men of the Morris.
I raise my elbow and drink a flowing bowl
to arch-maltster John Harris and
the 9 billow maidens
in their comely white smocks.
For tonight we’ll merry-merry be.
For tonight we’ll merry-merry be.
For tonight we’ll merry-merry be.
Tomorrow, we’ll be sober.

Old Hooky voted "Best Beer In The World"

The Hook Norton Brewery

The Holly Bush in Olde Hampstead

CAMRA: The Campaign For Real Ale

Every Red-Blooded Man's Dream Date

I’m hardwired a little differently
from your typical red-blooded slavering
heterosexual male of the species. I must be.
Otherwise this would all feel like a much bigger deal.
Hard to believe, I know, but she wasn’t the first choice for the role.
Kate Moss was unavailable, and Peaches Honeyblossom
Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof was far too busy.
Or somesuch. My inside information only stretches so far.
Behind the tinted windows of the silver MPV,
there’s complimentary sugarless chewing-gum
and the bottled water is strictly carbonated.
I’ve been instructed to program the number of
today’s Close Protection Officer into my Nokia.
Just in case. Though it’s not really me that
Johnny Paparazzi is going to be interested in.
Afterall, tomorrow’s celebrity gossip pages are hardly
likely to lead with the headline; “How did a sweet girl
from Ladysmith in British Columbia, end up stepping-out
with the 1994 UK National Student Playwright of the year?”
Although, wouldn’t it be refreshingly
less jejune of them if they did?

My "date" with Pamela Denise Anderson

I Lie Here In A Strange Girl’s Apartment (After Brautigan)

I lie here in a strange girl’s apartment, reading
a poem called ‘I Lie Here in a Strange Girl’s Apartment’,
written by an American man called Richard Gary Brautigan
who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the year 1984.
And you have to realise that I didn’t plan it this way. Not at all.
I mean, you have to realise that this is a case of purest serendipity at play.
I simply opened the book (first published in New York City 41 years ago),
turned over the page, and there it was; 14 lines long
and printed on Delta paper now slightly mottled with age.
Lying here in a strange girl’s apartment while she takes a shower,
I find myself listening to the sound of the running water, and imagining that
it’s the sound of the Pacific ocean that I can hear coming from the other room.
I imagine the black-green kelp. I imagine the seagulls shrieking overhead.
Richard Gary Brautigan’s ‘I Lie Here in a Strange Girl’s Apartment’
is dedicated to a woman called “Marcia”. But what I don’t know,
and probably never will, is whether or not this Marcia
is the same Marcia as the Marcia who Brautigan
dated for a time, and who turned out to be the last person
he ever spoke to (on the telephone), before pointing
a loaded .44 Magnum at his troubled and quixotic head.
That Marcia, so the story goes, tried calling back later,
but repeatedly got Brautigan’s answer-machine instead.
“Hello, as you can probably tell, I’m not here right now,
but you can leave a message for when I am here,
after the beep” are the words which Marcia heard.
Over, and over, and over again.

Richard Brautigan page at 'Old Poetry Dotcom'

Saturday Morning With The Chiropidist

My grandfather wasn’t allowed to
fight in the War because he had flat feet.
At least, that’s the story I remember being told as a child.
And so he was forced to stay behind, whilst his friends
went off to help liberate the people of France and Europe.
And all because of a couple of fallen arches.
As it turns out, my problem isn’t of a biomechanical nature afterall.
I was misled. Which is proof of why one should always seek a second opinion.
The Plester blood runs strong and true in my genes,
but my feet perhaps owe more to my
Mother’s side of the family. The Anderson side.
It’s from there, afterall, that I derive my webbed toes.
Now, whilst considered quite normal for birds and amphibians,
in human-beings the fusion of two or more digits of the feet
has always been regarded as somewhat unusual.
Not P. T. Barnum unusual, or Joseph “John” Merrick unusual,
but a talking point all the same. Something worth removing
your shoes-and-socks for if a party trick was ever required.
Affecting roughly 1 in every 2,500, David Cronenberg, Dan Ackroyd and
General Secretary Joseph Stalin were all born with webbed toes just like mine.
To this day, the exact cause remains unknown.
But yes, since you ask, I was always better
at swimming underwater than
any of my class-mates back at school.

What’s Wrong With This Archetypal Diluvian Scene?

An Old Testament rain falls hard
on a newly resurfaced cul-de-sac road.
Mount Ararat, for its part, lies far off to the East.
I pray for the deluge to continue for another 149 days.
For another 5 months solid. Until such time
as the sweet chestnuts begin to leaf again.
Mayhap the good Lord will send me a pretty girl for company.
A pretty girl with hair the colour of goldfish,
and lips that smell of rose syrup and almond oil.
We could fall asleep next to each other
upon an unmade bed, with all our clothes still on,
and dream like Pharoahs as the water-levels
inch higher and higher and The Thames bursts open
its dirty banks and submerges London
like Atlantis before it
in a flurry of escaping oxygen bubbles.
Noah drank a lot of wine and lived to be 905 years old.
I don’t envy him that longevity at all. Not one bit.

Tortila Chip Risk Assessment

Actor (late 30s) is advised to warm-up prior to action.
The stunt co-ordinator will assess the actor
and only allow him to work within his ability.
The shelving unit might need to be dressed with a soft facing.
The cardboard display case might require some light scoring.
As for the stepladder, that may need to be wedged to prevent kickback.
If several takes are required, the co-ordinator
will monitor the actor’s condition throughout
and advise accordingly. The nearest hospital
is Barking General on Upney Lane.

"Start Rocking With Doritos"

The Spirit Of Old John Barleycorn

Do you believe in giants?
Jez Butterworth surely does.
Cornish giants in particular. The likes of
Cormoran and Blunderbore, and lovelorn Bolster -
who once stained the sea waters red with his blood.
I've fond memories of Mister Butterworth,
for it was he who taught me how to roll the perfect
Peking duck pancake with hoisin sauce. But that was many years ago.
Jez is older now. And wiser. And time has tickled his beard with frost.
One of five siblings, he grew up in suburban St. Albans.
These days however, Jez lives in rural Somerset and raises pigs.
And good luck to him I say. May Queen Mab bless him always.
The West Country soil has helped him to relocate his muse,
whilst mine remains stubbornly mired
in the deepest dankest pile of hogshite.
Set in the fictional Wiltshire village of Flintock,
Jez’s new play ‘Jerusalem’ features a masterful
and mercurial lead performance by Mark Rylance.
An actor with all the poise and fury of a Raging Ballerina.
An actor who rolls his own cigarettes and drinks 8 raw eggs a week.
Based on a real-life “local” character called Mickey Doo,
Rylance is the living, breathing, belching embodiment
of an angry, disenfranchised and gelded olde England.
For amongst all the talk of of bric-a-brac and tombolas,
and floats and fetes and whirley-swirlers, the play reaches out
to the ancient lay-lines that criss-cross our faded realm
and seeks to summon up the totem spirits of Jack-O-The-Green
and poor John Barleycorn - the Christ-like lord of the hops.
The play resonates. It hums. It dances upon telluric currents.
It reminds me of blowjob I was once given
in a crop circle near Alton Barnes in 1992.
They ploughed, they sowed, they harrowed him in.
They throwed clods of dirt upon his head.
But Johnny Rooster Byron shall rise again.
Just like the Harvest. Just like the holy Nazarene.
Here’s to the revels. Here’s to the ruckus. Here’s to the
fracas almighty and the sweet blessed Merrie-oh.
We leave the theatre with the scent of gasoline still in our hair.
And with the Wyvern dragon flying proud upon gold-tipped wings.

Royal Court trailer for 'Jerusalem'

A Ramble Around Saint James’s Park

I’m lost in London’s oldest royal park on a Friday afternoon.
It’s the truth. My sense of direction is not what it used to be.
I stand and watch the pelicans vulning themselves beside the lake.
The Palace to the west. The Mall
and the blackened bronze of the
Boer War memorial straight ahead.
What became of the lady lepers when they disbanded the hospital in 1532?
What became of the camels and the crocodiles?
The harlots and the ragpickers and the rake hells?
I’ve been walking round in a daze for almost 9 months now.
There’s an undertow. And it’s dragging me under.

I Am An Antychryst

If you go down in the North Rhine-Westphalia
woodlands today, you'd better not go alone.
For if you go down in the North Rhine-Westphalia
woodlands today, you'd best take along a miscarrying doe,
a fabulous talking fox and a half-dead Hitchcockian raven.
Called the most shocking movie ever shown at Cannes,
Lars Von Trier’s latest expectorate is an
act of gross Cognitive Zentropa Therapy.
Struggling with depression for the past 2 years,
the self-proclaimed Greatest Director In The World
maintains that making the movie helped save his life.
No computer programmes called Automavision on display here.
No smalltown Main Street marked out on the floor in gaffa-tape.
No strict "Vow of Chastity" rule-books to adhere to.
The writing is on the blackboard for He and for She.
The joy of Creation is in every frame.
Nature portrayed as Satan's own church.
Original sin. Chaos reigns. Grief, pain and despair. In that order.
Remember that acorns don’t cry.
Remember that Tarkovsky died from lung cancer.
Don't forget to leave the Butterkist at home.

Official 'Antichrist' website

Buy 'Gynocide' by Mariarosa Dalla Costa

Show Me The Way To The House Of The Nightingales

So I'm driving steadily north, inland,
through steeply wooded surroundings,
following the route once taken by Hannibal and his elephants.
Away from the homogenous hotels, the golf seminars and the Easyjet-setters.
Ascending through dense swathes of cork and pine and evergreen eucalyptus.
Upwards towards the scent of fig and orange and Piri-Piri chicken.
The Four Tops on the hire-car stereo. Diana Ross & The Supremes.
The Isley Brothers, The Marvelettes and blind little Stevie Wonder.
I have my swimmers in the trunk. I have my factor-35.
I have Jimmy Ruffin and The Four Tops.
I have Jnr Walker & The All Stars singing
'How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You' from 1966.
I have the promise of cocktails and a view to die for.

Cabana Dos Rouxinois

We Have Ourselves A Lift Off

Countdown is at tee-minus-sixty-seconds.
Feel the weight of your body on the chair.
Feel the weight of your feet on the floor.
The pressure of your clothes on your skin
and the play of oxygen on your face and hands.
Feel the dry sense of taste in your mouth, and
smell the air as it is breathed in. And then out again.
We have transferred to internal power and the transfer
is most satisfactory. Verify that. No unexpected errors.
Let form be perceived through your eyes.
Refrain from judging what you see, just let it be perceived.
Let your hearing go out beyond the furthest sound, to the
great stillness beyond. Tee-minus-thirty-seconds and counting.
Rest now. Rest in the awareness of your existence.
Existence without limit. Tee-minus-twenty-seconds. Nineteen. Eighteen.
The clock is running. Switch on. Tune in. Enjoy the ride.
Tee-minus-ten. Tee-minus-nine. Ignition sequence started.
All systems are green. All systems are go.
Farewell from The Garden of Eden.
Good luck Mr. Gorsky and Godspeed.

We Choose The Moon: an interactive re-creation of Apollo 11's flight

Tautology Of A Band Name

These Local Natives hail from
the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Near the reservoir. East of the Hollywood Hills.
They all share a house together there.
Like the Monkees did in their syndicated TV series.
Like John, Paul, George and Ringo did in 'Help'.
They eat breakfast together around a big table.
Buy their groceries together. Do their laundry together.
They probably sing together in the shower;
where the acoustics are always so much better.
Here, tonight, on a Monday evening, they’re
playing their first gig beyond North American shores.
The narrow stage is shaking from the exuberant clatter
of their splash cymbals and their multiple drumsticks.
Here, tonight, on a Monday evening, is where it's at.
The boys in the audience have grown mustaches to mark the occasion.
The girls down the front have spent the
weekend practicing their eyelash batting.
And when these Local Natives tip their heads back,
close their eyes, and unleash upon us their
soaring 4-part desert-sand barbershop yelping,
our feet all leave the ground for a second.
And it's then that we realise, if we didn't before,
that these infectious young men probably won’t be
sharing a house together for very much longer.

Local Natives at MySpace

Land Of The Midnight (Or Black) Sun

One day, not so very long ago,
She invited me to spend Midsummer with her,
across the waters, on top of sunshine mountain.
Amongst the juniper and the toadstools and the green birch.
I looked into flights. I booked the time off work.
I read Tove Jansson and watched Tartovsky’s 'The Sacrifice'.
And then she stopped returning my calls. Even when she was drunk.
And that was the end of that particular chapter.
And so when, in years to come, people ask me
where I was when I heard that The King Of Pop
had died, I’ll be able to tell them only this much;
I was out in my wooden garden, in just my underwear,
drinking a cup of redbush tea in the moonlight,
and thinking about how much closer
to the Arctic circle I should’ve been.
How I should've been counting cat’s hairballs
and collecting rain water in coffee jars.
Watching a country house slowly become a bonfire.
Watching a dry Japanese tree transform into a maypole.
Maybe next year instead? Before I turn 40.
Before the frogs start growing their ears back.

Banned 'Midsummer' Ikea Commercial

Don’t Shoot The Messager (Ne Tirez Pas Le Messager)

I see children with their eyes scratched out.
I see angel’s wings and shrunken heads and BDSM.
Discarded yarn and woolen viscera. Please do not touch.
I see a flock of dead sparrows, arranged in lines
and embalmed in crocheted doll’s clothing.
I see Caribbean sunsets, chimeras, and stigmata.
I see roadkill in a baby’s nursery.
I see a Disney Store abattoir shop-window.
Fermentation. Emancipation. Genocide. Chiromancy.
Little Annie Messager is a Trickster. A Phoney. An Art Brut.
A Collector of oblique artifacts. A curator of curious Peep-shows.
I see me some sugar. I see me some spice.
I see me an unshaven Mound of Venus
and this cold hard rain against the windows.

Annette Messager: The Messengers Exhibition

The Far Out Recording Company

In 1988, I left home for the first time
and went to live right beside the seaside.
I shared a chalet with a man called David,
who had a harelip and worked in the kitchen department.
In the mornings, I would clean my teeth in the tiny bathroom
whilst looking out through frosted-glass at the sand-dunes.
My gums would bleed and my eyes would itch.
I was only there for the fag-end of the summer,
but it was the longest 4 weeks of my life.
I couldn’t wait for the nights to start drawing-in again.
Before I left home, someone had given me a C90 cassette tape
onto which they had imprinted the sounds of an album entitled
‘The 8-Legged Groove Machine’, by a band that I’d never heard of.
I listened to that album from start to finish at least
once a day every day. Pausing just once to pop the lid
and turn it over. It became something of a ritualistic act.
A way of escaping to another world. A world far removed
from the salt air and the donkey derbies. A place where
buzz guitars roared and stretched calf-skin was soundly pounded.
I played that little box of tunes until the magnetic tape finally snapped.
It was music that made me want to pierce my earlobes.
It was music that helped me develop a sneering disdain
for my fellow man. Without that album, I’d no doubt have
walked out into the Atlantic one cold morning and never looked back.
When The Wonder Stuff played their farewell gig in 1994,
I was far far away; truly on the other side of the planet.
It was 82 degrees in the North Queensland sun, but
I still wore my black t-shirt my black knee-length shorts
and my cherry-red Doctor Marten boots. I calculated
the time difference. I observed a minute's silence.
When I got back to England, I cut off my hair
and split-up with my girlfriend. And things
got worse before they got better.



The Wonder Stuff's first ever TV appearance

With A Bit Of Heart

She’s never eaten dim sum before.
This is her very first time. Her debut.
The char siu buns are stacked
ontop of the scallop-and-shitake,
which sit ontop of the vegetable puffs,
with the sticky rice wrapped in
lotus leaf right at the bottom.
We watch together, as the jasmine tea
slowly unfurls itself in the clear hot water
like a flowering foetus from the Song Dynasty.
Over dessert, She tells me that her ex-boyfriend proposed
to her earlier this week. Somewhat out of the blue.
But she doesn’t tell me whether she said yes or not.

Celebrating The Jubilant Spirit Within

There’s a dance-off taking place on Roseberry Avenue.
The Orchard Family are clogging on a sheet of plywood.
Phil Jamison is bucking-and-winging in the Appalachian flatfoot manner.
And The Tuscarora Singers, true to their Deer Clan roots,
are stomping in an anti-clockwise direction in order
to best honour their ancestors and praise the giant turtle
upon who's mighty back the world of man was formed.
You might call them Gypsies, Hillbillies and Amerinds.
And papa woulda shot them if he knew what they’d done.
Heel and toe. Or both in unison. Two melodeons and a tinwhistle.
Mosquito dance. Robin dance. Long shirts. Smoke and hemp.
Shining-the-shoes. Snake-in-the-grass. Milking-the-cow’s-tail.
Watch and learn. And next time, bring a
wooden limberjack doll with you.

The Deer Clan Singers at MySpace

Bishop Allen Drive In Cambridge, Massachusetts

These days, the first thing I like to do
when I get an ink stamp on the back of my fist
and walk into a gig, is to look around the room and
identify at least one person there who’s older than me.
Or at least one person who looks as if they’re older than me.
Then I can relax. Then I can start to enjoy myself.
Then I can kickback and begin stomping my feet a little.
I don’t know how old Christian and Justin from Bishop Allen are
(I find it increasingly difficult to work these things out these days),
but I do know that they’re both appeared in low-budget
16-millimetre mumblecore movies made by Andrew Bujalski;
an old friend of theirs and former Harvard University roommate.
Now based in cooler-than-though Brooklyn, these 2 charismatic
afro-beat calypso-cowboy rock-a-hipsters have brought a touch
of the boho vogue with them to Dalston Kingsland this eve.
The joint is jumping. The boudoir is bopping. The kids are all singing along.
At the back, near the booths, someone turns to me
and asks me how I first heard about Bishop Allen.
I don’t lie. I tell them I was introduced to their music by a girl.
The same girl, I tell them, who also re-introduced me to Bukowski.
The same girl, coincidentally, who I found myself
standing behind on the escalator only yesterday.
I didn’t say hello to her, or make my presence known.
I didn’t feel it was appropriate. I kept my head down
while she played absent-mindedly with her hair.

Bishop Allen play ‘Click, Click, Click, Click’ on the streets of NYC

Official website for the movie ‘Funny Ha Ha’

Official website for the movie ‘Mutual Appreciation’

Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Extinct Supermarket

There’s no other filmmaker in the world
who could move from images of featureless tundra
to black-and white footage of the Lone Ranger & Tonto
and back again, via an amateur etching of a monkey
sat upon the back of a goat. But Werner Herzog is a law unto himself.
Married 4 times and famous for directing his lead actors at gunpoint,
Bavaria’s most anarchic auteur stands like an iceberg in the 1am sunlight,
whilst beneath his feet, in tunnels carved out by human hands, rests
a single frozen sturgeon and a
necklace of frozen popped popcorn.

Trailer for 'Encounters At The End Of The World'

Frosty Boy frozen yoghurt: official website

Jag Vill Ha Sex Please!

No April Fool's joke this. I’m here to break a record.
I’m here, in my favourite Scandinavian cafe,
to try and eat more hot dogs in one sitting
than anyone has ever dared to eat in here before.
Any excuse to wear my blue Björn Borg underpants.
Any excuse to wear my vintage 1986 Hummel football shirt.
Seriously, I’ve been in training. I’ve even employed a designated scorekeeper.
I've chosen the best seats in the house. I've removed my belt. The stage is set.
My favourite barista is on duty today, and she piles them high;
warm korv in a Vienna-type bread roll, with toasted onions,
ketchup, a healthy dash of remoulade and a squeeze of
nuclear-green sweet pickle relish on the top.
En, Två, Tre, Fyra, Fem and Sex.
It’s a messy business. Not for the fainthearted.
Turns out, the word “Sex” in Swedish can mean
both the digit 6 and, yes, also the act of making love.
It’s a Nordic double-entendre not lost on me.
The day is Wednesday. The time is 16:43 hours.
The receipt simply reads; Hot Dog Hot Dog
Hot Dog Hot Dog Hot Dog Hot Dog.

New hot dog eating champions at the Scandinavian Kitchen

See how hot dogs are made...

Joey Chestnut sets a new world record

Alan Moore Doesn't Watch The Watchmen

From the moment the screen turns a beautiful shade of
smiley-face yellow, I’m confident that the next 162 minutes
are going to far exceed any of the expectations I may have had.
The Warner Bros. logo appears. Black on smiley-face yellow.
The Legendary Pictures logo appears. Black on smiley-face yellow.
The DC comics logo appears. Black on beautiful smiley-face yellow.
Prepare yourself for the smell of Nostalgia. Here comes the human bean-juice.
The secondary colours are all present and correct.
So are the dirigibles and the triangles and the geodesic domes.
See there, the genetically-engineered lynx.
See there, the Gunga Diner fast-food wrappers.
See Jon Osterman, with his big blue uncut cock and his shaven blue ball-sack.
Believe me, I don’t miss the presence of the psychic alien squid thing.
And I don’t miss the excerpts from ‘Tales Of The Black Freighter’ either.
I don’t even mind that Hollis Mason dies off-screen. Really I don’t.
Thing is, I can still remember the first time I saw
those magical words; “Suggested for Mature Readers Only”.
Things is, I can still remember underlining the phrase
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” in a school library book.
Darren Aronofsky decided to make ‘The Fountain’, rather than run the gauntlet.
Paul Greengrass passed. Terry Gilliam went so far as to say it couldn’t be done.
If I’m losing you, then tough-titty. Either ride out
the storm or go cry in somebody else's cornflakes.
This film simply wasn’t made for you. And what’s more, I’m glad it wasn’t.
They’re even playing ‘Hallelujah’ on the soundtrack.
And what’s more, it’s the original Leonard Cohen version.

Play the retro 80's Watchmen arcade game

'Watchmen': the Saturday morning cartoon version

Sugar On The Mound

I don’t know much about baseball,
but I do know that it’s far-and-away the most
popular sport amongst the people of the Dominican República.
Nothing else even comes close. God, Fatherland, Liberty, Baseball.
Makeshift diamonds on every empty parking lot. Jumpers for bases.
Miguel ‘Sugar’ Santos is 19 years old, and a rookie pitcher
for the Quad City Swing in Davenport, Iowa. He’s a young man,
a long way from home, with an uncommon ability on the mound.
Smokeball. Curveball. Knuckleball. Okie-Dokie. Backdoor slider.
His all-time favourite ballplayer is Roberto Clemente;
a Puerto Rican who won 12 (twelve) Gold Glove Awards,
made 3,000 career base hits, and became the first Latin American
to be elected into the prestigious MLB Hall of Fame. Posthumously.
Miguel ‘Sugar’ Santos is played by Algenis Perez Soto. He’s been
playing baseball since he was 9 years old. ‘Sugar’ is his film debut.
Writer/Directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck took a chance on the kid.
And the kid doesn’t let them down. He keeps his eye on the game.
The infectious sound of the bachata music follows him wherever he goes.
It’s only as the end credits complete their upwards roll
and the lights come back on, that I’m reminded
of the fact I’m sat here all alone in the cinema stalls.
But hey, it's not like this is a new experience for me or anything.
She’s stood me up before, and she’ll no doubt stand me up again.
9th inning. 2 strikes against. Oh say it ain’t so, Joe.
Go on, Joe, say it ain't over till it's over.

Official Website for the movie 'Sugar'

Tinnitus Comes From The Latin Word For Ringing

In the narrow kitchen, between sips
of tea, is where our lips meet and linger.
There’s a solid 12-year age gap, but
that’s not the reason why my ear is bleeding.
For the ear is a complicated piece of apparatus,
and we all know that you should never put
anything smaller than your elbow into
your external acoustic meatus.
It's just that some of us choose to learn these things the hard way.
I need to avoid any high or low pressures for the next 6-8 weeks.
That means no planes. And no bathyspheres neither.
I probably shouldn’t even be drinking.
Not with the antibiotics.

The Sound Of The Perennial Long Grass Rustling

Virginia-born Andy Cabic could’ve called his band
Palmarosa. Or Citronella. Or maybe even Sandalwood.
But he didn’t. He didn’t call his band any of those things.
And music this good, would still sound this good
whether it was played at the bottom of the deepest ocean,
or way up there; above the clouds, where only Gods were s’posed to tread.
For Vetiver sing simple songs about coming on strong and going down fast.
Songs about going fishing. Songs about the open road.
Songs that clarify. Songs that refresh. Songs about lemon trees
and rainbow skies. Songs about good times and good friends
and San Fransisco's Mission District by-the-bay.
Lilting, twirling, shimmering songs. Songs that rusticalize.
Andy Cabic wears a corduroy fisherman’s cap throughout.
A “Donovan” cap, as my dad might choose to describe it.
Like vintage Joe Orton. Like Lennon back in ‘64.
It reminds me of a corduroy fisherman’s cap I had as a child.
I had a real thing for hats when I was younger.
Hats were the first thing I ever learnt to draw.
I went everywhere in that corduroy fisherman’s cap of mine.
I flew kites with my grandfather in that hat.
Oh mamma. Oh papa. Watch me, as I follow the breadcrumbs home,
out through the tall and fragrant kuss-kuss grass, illuminated by
the new moon hung high above Primrose Hill.

Welcome to the Vetiverse

The English Folk Dance and Grime Society

There's a (Black Man) in Cecil Sharp House.
And he’s onstage alongside a folk roots rebel man.
And he’s onstage alongside a folk roots rebel man. Ha-Ha!
In 1965, they shouted “Judas” at Bobby Zimmerman for
daring to plug-in and tune-up at The Newport Folk Festival,
and the sound of that traditionally-arranged booing lingers still.
Just ask Jim Moray. He’s been courting controversy throughout his career.
Woe indeed to the folk singer who betrays the Son of Man!
Tonight, the room takes a sharp intake of collective breath
as Moray is joined onstage in the Kennedy Hall
by a man known by the nickname Bubbz (aka Chief Bossman).
Together, they collaborate on the ancient seminal ballad
‘Lucy Wan’ (aka ‘Lizie Wan’ and sometimes ‘Fair Lizzie’),
which concerns itself with the ancient seminal taboo
of incestual acts between a sister and a brother.
Elsewhere in the set there’s some stomping hurdy-gurdy,
a sampled African mbira thumb-piano, and a re-working
of XTC’s 1984 sea-shanty singalong ‘All You Pretty Girls’.
Jim's new album ‘Low Culture’ is in stores now,
and is available for the recommended
retail price of 30 silver shekels.
See you in the Fourth level of hell.

Listen to 'Adam Ant Is Unwell' by Jim Moray

I Can't Believe You're 38 And Single

You have to believe me when I tell you that I’m not used to this.
I’m not used to women throwing themselves at me.
And I’m certainly not used to more than 1 woman
throwing themselves at me at the exact same time.
I’m currently attracting them from as far away as 10 kilometres.
If you could see the queen butterfly
in her black cocktail dress, with the
red rose in her ice-blonde peroxide hair
smiling her champagne smile, you’d think me a fool.
And you wouldn’t be alone in that. For I’m looking at her,
and I’m thinking me a fool too. A fool in sheep’s clothing.
“I can’t believe you’re 38 and single” are the words she says
as she sits down beside me and rests her head upon my shoulder.
And I think she means it in a nice way.
Look, I’m still broken, is what I say to her.
I'm sorry, but I’m still hurting is my excuse.
But the truth is that I’m too scared.
The truth is that I’ll only disappoint.
The truth is I need to floss more regularly.
The truth is I need to trim my nasal hairs
freeze that verruca on my right big toe
and get my Templeton skin-tag removed.
It’s better this way, I tell myself. And that’s the truth of the matter.
But since when did the truth have anything to do with these things?

Talking All That Taco De Harina

We were sitting at the window seat
of the Tex-Mex, my friend and me, and I was explaining
to her the simple secret behind an authentic burrito.
About how the rice and the pinto beans and
the sour cream and the guaca-mole and the salsa
should all be folded-up inside the soft flour tortilla,
and not simply served on the side like salad garnish.
And how the knife and the fork really only added insult to injury.
And we were sitting there, deciding whether or not
there was time to finish up here, wipe our lips
and grab one more amaretto sour each before
the long tube ride home, when a hairy face
appeared on the other side of the glass, looking in.
The hairy face was instantly familiar to us, for it belonged
to a headlining anti-folk singer, who’d just spent the evening
crooning and strumming and wiggling his zitzit tassels for us
from up upon the wooden stage of a nearby Anglican church.
I tried to warn him. Honestly I did. I stepped right outside
onto the pavement there, and I tried my best to warn him off.
And yes, I tried my best to warn his American band-mates too.
I apologized on behalf of myself and all my fellow citizens.
I explained that things were slowly changing.
That the message was slowly getting through.
But that yes, for the most part, the majority of wannabe taquerías
in this godforsaken sad little desperado shanty-town city of mine,
were still unfortunately run by the kind of chef de plúnges
who wouldn’t know a decent cochinita pibil if it were to suddenly
turn around and bite them on their güero-coloured gabacho asses.
But of course, in the end, it wasn’t anything they hadn’t heard before.
And I could see the burning hunger all around their eyes.
And I knew they hadn't eaten properly since the flight.
And so, we left them there, beneath the stars, guitars in hands,
knowing that ultimately it had to be their decision. And their decision alone.
We stopped at the first bar we came to, my friend and me,
and we ordered our amaretto sours. One each. For the road.
Made with fresh egg white, with a maraschino cherry on the top.
As if we had any kind of choice in the matter.


Video for the Herman Dune single ‘1-2-3 Apple Tree’

The Lithuanian Act Of Independence

It’s Independence Day in Baltic Lithuania.
The yellow green and red is flying high all over town.
Today’s drive southwest to the manor house at Traku Voke
is with a new unit-driver. One I’ve not ridden with before.
He has a face like a bag of fresh turnips and he’s not wearing a seatbelt.
I tell him I’m here to film a new version of ‘Frankenstein’.
I tell him it’s a take on the true story which helped
inspire Mary Shelly to write the original gothic novel.
I point out that I’m playing the role of The Doctor, not The Monster.
It’s important, I feel, to make that distinction clear at the outset.
“Doctor Frankenstein was Lithuanian you know”, says the driver.
“Really?” I reply. Knowing full well that he was actually from Switzerland.
I don’t mention Peter Cushing. I don’t bring up Boris Karloff.
I say that in our version, Doctor Frankenstein is Italian;
a physicist called Giovanni Aldini, who came to England in
1802 to perform theatrically spectacular galvanic experiments
upon the body parts of animals and the corpses of executed criminals.
I say that in our version, this thoroughly-modern Prometheus
wears a frock-coat, some knee-breeches and a pearl earring.
The unit-driver nods and allows this information to sink in for a moment.
He looks me up and down and changes gear, before saying; “you look Italian.”
“By this”, he continues after a pause; “I mean you look like a negro.”
There is silence in the vehicle for a little while.
Snow falls effortlessly on the road in front of us.
And then, smiling like a frightened chimpanzee,
I ask through exposed gums how much further it is
to our intended destination.


Trailer for 'True Horror: Frankenstein'

"It's Alive!"

Herman Munster sings 'Dem Dry Bones'

The Curious Case Of Sunday February Eighth

It’s just this side of midnight
when I climb into bed, alone,
and reach across to extinguish the side-light.
I can still smell her cigarette smoke in my hair.
I can still taste the cinnamon chewing stick on my gums.
On the cinema screen, I can still see the film unwinding.
Bradley Pitt is ageing in reverse; thanks to the prosthetics and the VFX.
We’re buying popcorn. We’re walking past the Royal Opera House.
We’re standing outside the Mexican restaurant in the rain.
Across the table in the coffeehouse, I can’t be sure,
but there’s a moment of stillness, when it feels like
she wants to lean across, cup my face in her hands,
and kiss me, slowly, whilst keeping her eyes closed.
Just like I want to lean across and slowly kiss her too.
I'm walking across Regent’s Park counting surviving snowmen.
I'm making breakfast still wearing last night’s nail-varnish.
I'm waking up, alone, 68 years after Francis Scott Fitzgerald
died from a heart attack, in the living-room
of his mistress's first floor apartment,
whilst waiting for the doctor to arrive.
Head still hazy from the blended Scotch whiskey.
The jazz age no more than a fading tubercolic memory.

'The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button' by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fikamusikkonsert-In-The-Fields

One of the many things I love about
our Swedish cousins, is the fact that they’ve
a word in their lexicon which roughly means
“to meet-up with friends and drink some coffee”.
And that word is fika. Some fika. To fika. It’s fika time!
Now strictly speaking, a fika isn’t really a fika without
the accompaniment of something sweet on the side.
A cinnamon roll perhaps. Or a saffron bun.
Or, in tonight’s case at least, a low-key gig
in a church dedicated to the patron saint of outcasts.
Better known by the pseudonym Loney Dear,
Emil Svanängen is a multimember home-recording
one-man-band phenomenon, who appears
very much at ease up on the pulpit this evening.
For whilst other Scandinavians of his age were out
meeting girls, drinking snaps and smoking herring,
Emil was in his parent’s basement in the city of Jönköping,
armed with a minidisk microphone, various instruments and his PC.
In a recent interview, Emil described his albums as being a bit like cakes.
The kind of cake this brings to mind
is a traditional Swedish Prinsesstårta;
multi-layered and dusted with sugar.
A light green falsetto exterior giving way
to a rich swollen centre of whipped
percussion and butterfat handclaps.
If he doesn’t hook you with the spiraling glockenspiel
in ‘I Am John’, he’ll no doubt ensnare you instead with
the whistling refrain that underpins ‘I Was Only Going Out’
or the singalong section which enhances ‘The Meter Marks OK’.
Your sweet-tooth smile widening with each new overdub.
Outside, afterwards, fika-time over for another day,
we lean against the gravestones for a while
and suck on cold beers whilst a steward
sweeps-up cigarette butts at our feet.
Loney Dear has a plane to Boston Massachusetts to catch in the morning
I’ve got a radiator that needs bleeding.


Loney Dear play live on Band Busking Dotcom

Bring Me The Sunglasses Of David Samuel Peckinpah

One day, when I’m all growed-up,
I want to be a gringo lounge lizard pianist.
I want to live in a brothel in Mexico City,
wear linen leisure suits and polyester shirts,
eat Machaca Con Huevos in a dusty pueblo,
drink Kentucky bourbon mixed with cheap champagne,
drive a beaten-up Chevy Impala convertible,
and die in a slow-motion bloodbath
reminiscent of a Kurosawa ballet.
And all because some embittered half-breed cazique
thinks it prudent to place a $1 million bounty
upon the head of the dead gigolo
who knocked-up his whore of a daughter.
All because it feels so Goddamnedly good!

Shootout sequence from 'Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia'

The Sublime Society Of All Day Breakfasts

East of the City walls and north of the Thames,
within earshot of the chiming of Saint Mary-le-Bow’s bells
is where you’ll find the E. Pellicci greasy spoon eaterie.
Constructed out of mother-of-pearl buttons
on the original site of the Stone of Brutus,
they’ve been frying things in pigfat here for over a century.
At an elbow-room-only corner seat sit The Kray Twins;
eating liver and onion sandwiches whilst reading the gutter press.
‘Brown Bread’ Freddie Foreman is tucking into his pie and mash.
Tony and Chris Lambrianou are happily sharing a raspberry ripple.
The custard-coloured vintage Vitrolite panelling.
The Art-Deco wholegrain mustard marquetry.
The laminate wood tables. The framed family portraits.
The caged raven, beneath the counter, with its wings neatly clipped.
So long as E. Pellicci is safe, so long shall London flourish.

eggbaconchipsandbeans blog

'Classic Cafes: The Book' by Adrian Maddox

Dedicated To My Darling Violet

A Cheyenne Indian reads T. S. Eliot
in the attic room of a large rambling
family home 60 miles northwest of Tulsa Oklahoma.
The homestead is more than a century old.
Papers and manilla envelopes litter
the floor of the first floor study.
Broken plates and china litter
the floor of the nearby dining room.
In the sitting room, next to the hi-fi turntable,
sits a vinyl copy of Clapton’s 1977 album ‘Slowhand’.
This is the home of Beverly Weston. A man with a girl’s name.
Just like Duke John Wayne.
Like the guy Johnny Cash sang about.
Like the American playwright Tracy Letts.
Beverly hasn’t published any poetry for 40 years.
Beverly is a habitual drunk. A sot. An old rummy.
His wife Violet is struggling with her equilibrium.
His 3 daughters all have man troubles of their own.
It’s clear now to all these women, that their pater familias
will never-but-never be coming home again.
Beverly’d been in the water for 3 days before they found his body.
The fish had eaten his eyes.
The fish had eaten his eyes.
The fish, I’m sorry to say, had eaten both
of his eyes.

Steppenwolf Theatre present 'August: Osage County'

Eric Clapton and friends sing 'Lay Down Sally'

Filmed In Mexico In Panavision

So there’s me, Chuck Heston,
Richard Harris, Jimmy Coburn Junior,
Warren Oates, Rodeo Slim Pickens,
L. Q. Jones, Cannonball Taylor
and Robert Golden Armstrong.
Out on the High Road, pursuing renegade Apaches.
Out on the High Road, pursued by French Irregulars.
Bloody Sam's trademark catsup red
staining the arroyo and the whinstone
and the waters of the Rio Grande.
Claymore and Colt and mini-howitzer.
Mules and buzzards and howling prairie wolves.
Mariachi guitar, south-of-the-border harmonica
and some of that old-time bareknuckled sucker-punching.
I know they don’t make them like this anymore,
just as surely as I know that
my heart is broke right now.
It needs time alone in the hot white sun.
Time to wallow in the charcoal of old cookfires.
For she is my scar tissue. And beyond doubt my Achilles Heel.
Leaning forward, I spit into the dirt,
wipe my mouth with the back of my hand
and, taking up the trailing reins,
ride up through the low juniper
to rejoin the column
as they turn and ride on towards
the crumbling walls of Durango.

Trailer for Sam Peckinpah's 'Major Dundee'

There's Something In The Woodshed

On the first day of another new year,
I slept through most of the 132 minutes
of Béla Tarr's noir-hewn ‘The Man From London’.
And as I slept, I dreamt of paint drying.
Thick, Hungarian, monochrome paint.
Satinwood. Eggshell. Polyurethane. Goulash.
I dreamt of Jonah in the belly of the whale.
I dreamt of Robinson Crusoe on his island of despair.
I dreamt of being held by the girl I love the most.
What woke me in the end, was the intermittent
sound of loud discordant robotic bleeping;
a technical problem with the 35mm film print.
On the screen was the image of a closed door in raw close-up.
A handle. A padlock. A deep weather-beaten grain to the wood.
The bleeping persisted. The camera remained focused on the closed door.
The bleeping didn't stop. Still, the camera remained focused on the closed door.
Now I’m at home, eating cold leftovers from the fridge.
I’m thinking about asking someone for my money back.
But as you know, that way true madness lies.

'Prologue': a short film by Béla Tarr

The Last Pause Is The Longest

There are two kinds of silence in this world.
And no-one knew that better than Harold Pinter.
Beckett may have started it, but it was
Pinter who made the pregnant pause his own.
‘The Homecoming’ contains 224 of them.
‘The Caretaker’, by comparison, a mere 149.
I don’t owe it all to this son of a Jewish tailor,
but I certainly owe him a lion’s share.
I saw him that once in the flesh; leaving his seat
following the posthumous premiere
of my friend’s suicide-note of a stageplay.
He was taller than I’d pictured him.
With a stature befitting of a Nobel laureate.
The black cells were in his gullet even then;
steadily multiplying, though not yet diagnosed.
How I wish now that I'd asked to shake his hand.
Afterall, in the end it’s all about the ferret
under the cocktail cabinet. Or is it a weasel?
Blackout. Curtain. Applause.

Harold Pinter: official website

My Own Private Guernica

Snow falls upon the Sierra de Guadarrama.
Shadows lengthen in the afternoon sun.
I could have gone to see Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ today,
but I just can’t face that capacious canvas right now.
I’m not really in the mood for abstracted strategic bombing.
I feel shot-thru with enough symbolic shrapnel as it is.
Instead I’m stood here, watching the street-walkers on the corner.
Counting the number of imported cigarettes smoked.
Counting the number of tricks turned.
The bull is just a bull. The dying horse is just a dying horse.
The inverted hidden harlequins are just inverted hidden harlequins.
I could have gone to see ‘The Garden Of Earthly Delights’ triptych.
Or ‘The Black Goyas’ (painted at home by a half-mad old deaf man),
but best I stay right here, partly hidden by the heavy curtains.
Collecting dust on my eyeballs. Slowly bleeding out.
A lemming on a clifftop.
A kitten in a gunny-sack.
I open the sallyport and close
the first door firmly behind me.
My white flag is unfurling.
I can feel my toes beginning to curl under.

Pablo Picasso's 'Guernica'

Take Me Back To Medicine Tail Coulee

“Nutskaveho!" came the cry on
that hot summer's afternoon. "Nutskaveho".
"The Bluecoats are coming! They are coming!"
And the Hunkpapa, they spoke the truth,
for there were indeed plenty of pony-soldiers,
and I could clearly hear the music of their bugles.
The fighting men of the Sioux swarmed
at the Bluecoats like bees from a hive,
and very soon the smoke
of the shooting and the dust
from the many horse's hooves
began to somewhat cloud my view of the hillside.
The white Starchief was dressed finely,
in buckskin, coat and pants,
and was kneeling down with his hands resting in the dirt.
His hair was long and loose, and somewhat
like the color of the grass when the frost first comes.
He had been shot through the side, and there was
blood trickling from the corner of his open mouth.
He seemed to be watching the red figures
as they moved slowly all around him.
Then the Indians closed in, and I did not see any more.
The old men say that only the Earth and the Sky last forever.
They spoke truly. They are right.


Trailer for the stageplay 'Yellow Longhair' (2000)

A Previously Unknown Organization Identifying Itself As The Deccan Mujahideen

My receipt from the Starboard bar
of Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace hotel
that Palm Sunday afternoon 4 years ago,
shows that we rehydrated with
a couple of Kingfishers, washed down
with bottled water from the high mountains.
I remember Formula One playing on a big-screen.
I remember complimentary packets of salted nuts.
The hotel's vaulted alabaster ceilings,
crystal chandeliers, hand-woven silk carpets,
dramatic cantilevered stairway and air-conditioning
had offered us an almost surreal respite
from the hawkers, gawkers and untouchables
outside on the streets of India's maximum city.
The next day, I remember catching an Ambassador taxi
back across the foul-smelling creek
and down through the outskirts of slumtown
to the Vee-Tee railway terminus.
There we boarded a train
which we didn’t get off of
until 36 hours later.

Browse the menu at Mumbai's Leopold Cafe

Son Nom Est Soko

The Scala in King's Cross
used to be a cinema.
Which is a happy coincidence,
because Stéphanie Sokolinski
used to be a movie actress.
In her vegan cowgirl boots
and Betty Boop smock-frock,
she steals tonight's show right from
under the nostrils of her Scandinavian hosts.
And she gets away with it because she’s so goshdarn cute.
Hardball cute you might say.
Soft on the outside and all crunchy in the middle.
95% sugar concentration.
Just the way I like my chanteuses.

Soko at Last.fm

Soko sings 'I Will Never Love You More'

No Canines Were Harmed During The Making Of This Motion Picture

When I make my next film, there’ll be a dog in it.
And yes, you can hold me to that.
There’s something about the way
they gaze directly down the barrel;
right into the heart of the lense
and straight through to the other side
- observing this farcical human puppet-show
in farsighted lateral shades of sepia.
Glassy-eyed like some shellshocked Tommy.
A two thousand yard stare which says;
I know God is dead, and what’s more, I knew
he was dead long before Freddie Nietzsche did.
A quiver of the snout. A lolling tongue. The faintest twitch of an ear.
What can I say? It gets me every time.
Writer/Director Kelly Reichardt certainly knows the score.
Her new film, ‘Wendy & Lucy’ stars Michelle Williams
as the eponymous Wendy, alongside Reichardt’s
very own pet dog, Lucy, as the eponymous Lucy.
Uncredited for her role in her owner's previous film, ‘Old Joy',
Lucy is a golden brown mixed-breed bitch.
What one used to call a mongrel. Or a mutt.
Her page at the International Movie Database lists her as Lucy (XXIX).
Lassie was played by a male Rough Collie.
Toto was played by a female Cairn Terrier.
The Littlest Hobo was actually played by 2 different
German Shepherds, both of whom were called London.
But let’s be honest about this, compared to Lucy,
they were all just show-offs. Sideshow acts. Circus freaks.
Lucy's from more of a Lee Strasberg kennel-of-thought.
Her recognition at this year’s Fido Awards stands testament to that.
Based on a short story by Jon Raymond, ‘Wendy & Lucy’
is set in a small town in Oregon's Cascade Mountains.
Much like the Union Pacific locomotives
that moan in the night like beached sealions,
our two heroines just happen to be passing through.
En route to Alaska in a second-hand 1987 Honda Accord.
The film cost just $300,000 to shoot and lasts for 90 minutes.
Which is about 630 minutes in dog-time.

'Wendy And Lucy' trailer

Lucy The Dog at IMDB

The Fido Awards (The Doggie Oscars)

Trailer for a short film in which I play a dog reincarnated as a man

And Thus Passes The Glory Of This World

I've an ability to stomach
happy-clappy finger-clicky
Nu-Folk-Pop better than most.
For that reason, ‘Peaceful The World Lays Me Down’,
the debut album from Noah & The Whale,
was the soundtrack to my summer just gone.
It's tweecore mix of fiddle, brass
and gently strummed gawkiness
instantly reminiscent of the back-roads
and boulangerie’s of French-kissed Provence.
Leading man Charlie Fink sings mostly love songs.
Sometimes he gets the girl. Othertimes not.
Such is the way of these things. Sic transit gloria.
If he wasn’t headlining a sold-out gig
at Camden’s Koko this evening,
Charlie Fink would probably be sat at home
wrapped in a patchwork blanket
watching an imported Hal Ashby film
whilst sipping Earl Grey from bone china.
In 5 years time, I wonder if he'll
remember just how meteoric has been his rise.
In 5 years time, I wonder if he’ll
still be producing Laura Marling’s records.
Still be getting nominated for Mercury prizes?
In The Year 2013, Charlie Fink will still only be 27.
The same age as Jimi Hendrix was
when he choked on his own vomit.
Then same age as Brian Jones, Jim Morrison
and Janis Joplin were when they met their maker.
The same age that Kurt Donald Cobain was
when he put the muzzle of that shotgun
in his mouth and
pressed reboot.

How to play '5 Years Time' on the ukulele

We All Dream Of A Team Of Carraghers

Number 1 is Carragher.
Number 2 is Carragher.
Number 3 is Carragher.
Number 4 is Carragher.
And so it goes on. All the way to the subs bench.
Tonight at The Lane, Liddypool’s travelling army
are dreaming of a line-up comprised entirely
of their homegrown number 23, Jamie Carragher.
It’s a nice dream for sure, but with
just over half-an-hour left to play
and trailing by four goals to a solitary one,
the reality is proving somewhat harder to stomach.
When the gaffer sacrifices El Niño
in favour of a South-American left-back
with only a stunted handful of
first-team appearances to his name,
it’s clear his priorities for the season lie elsewhere.
It’s clear then that it’s going to be a longer drive
back to the European Capital of Culture than usual
for the bull-headed Kopite stood next to me;
stuck deep with a lance and dazzled by the floodlights.
I can tell he’s already thinking about where
he’s going to hit The Wife when he gets home.
Somewhere where it’s less likely to show.
Near the kidneys perhaps. Maybe the soles of the feet.
But hey, come on, what do I know?
Maybe the guy lost a son in Afghanistan.
Maybe his mother is bed-ridden and requires 24-hour home care.
Maybe he’s waiting for the results of his bone marrow biopsy.
I'm thinking I might try and leave early.
Y’know, to avoid the crush?
Afterall, some of us have got work in the morning.


Mr. Starsailor sings 'We All Dream Of A Team Of Carraghers'

Fernando Torres 'Nike' advert

The 11th Hour Of The 11th Day

Don’t blame Gavrilo Princip for bringing
the Golden Age of Pax Britannica to an end.
He was only 19. The kid didn’t know what he was doing.
And in that, he can hardly be said to have been alone.

Black Is The New POTUS

They’re glued to CNN at Honolulu’s Punahou College.
And on the shores of Kenya’s Lake Victoria.
And in the city of Montgomery, Alabama too.
Glued to Wolf Blitzer’s Electoral Map Calculator
and to the “live-by-hologram”
interview between Anderson Cooper and
the vocalist from the Black Eyed Peas.
Knawing their fingernails to the bone.
Counting to 270 beneath their collective breaths.
When the Commonwealth of Virginia
turns blue, the fat lady starts singing.
The cake has been baked.
The hoops have been shot.
The bellwethers have been rung.
Defeat for the elephant. To the donkey, the spoils.
Sound a fanfare of automobile-horns for the common man.
HOPE springs ever eternal. Happy days are here again.
But please, this I beg of you good people
of America The Brave;
no more grassy knolls
Magic-Bullet Theories or
Texas School Book Depositories.
No more Ambassador Hotel kitchens or Lorraine Motel balconies.
No more Leon Czolgoszs and no more Charles J. Guiteaus.
This I beg of you good people of the Land Of The Free;
please, by the grace of Almighty God
in your Heaven above, no more
of those oft-quoted sockdologizing
old man-traps.



CNN: world's first hologram interview

will.i.am's 'Yes We Can' music video

'Don't Vote' public service announcement

'More Party Animals' merchandise

The Land Without Shadows

Stepping off the F-train at Stillwell Avenue,
I’m officially 241 days early for next year’s
Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest.
Plenty of time to get my oesophagus up to speed.
Plenty of time to line my stomach with milk.
Once overrun with rabbits, Coney Island
was immortalised by the penmanship of
Hubert Selby Junior and Joseph Heller.
This is the place Woodrow Guthrie called home.
This is what The Warriors fought all night to get back to.
I last walked the Coney boardwalk nigh on 10 years ago.
It was the morning of my 30th birthday. A watershed occasion.
I ate a blueberry ice-cream. I played some skee-ball. I dipped my feet in the water.
The abandoned Thunderbolt rollercoaster was still standing that day.
The Brooklyn Cyclones were still known as The St. Catharines Blue Jays.
And The Twin Towers still dominated
the Lower Manhattan skyline, and weren’t
all broken up into pieces and buried
along the banks of the Fresh Kills estuary
out there on the furthest horizon.


List of the gangs in 'The Warriors'

Nathan's Famous hot-dog eating contest

Marathon Changed Its Name To Snickers In 1990

Whichever way you look at it,
you’ve got to feel a little sorry
for Pheidippides of Ancient Greece.
In 490BC, he gave his life for the
cause of long-distance foot racing
and didn’t even get a 10K named in his honour.
Of course, things were very different in those days.
Back then, there were no tracking chips
fitted to participant’s sneakers
and no volunteer “Bandit-Catchers”
employed to stop unregistered runners
from crossing the finish-line in Central Park.
No live bands lined the route back in 490BC.
And no enthusiastic spectators gathered on bleacher seating.
Poor old Pheidippides. All that way;
across fennel fields and rocky terrain,
to deliver a message of victory to his people.
26 miles and 385 yards
without so much as a PowerBar gel blast.


'Run For Your Life': The true story of
Fred Lebow and the New York Marathon

Pass Me The Melatonin Please

It was early when I first awoke that morning.
A cold north wind was whistling around the high-rise.
Whispers of the Munsee Indians
who once laid claim to these lands.
We’d flown in Air India just the night before.
Lost 5 perfectly good hours in the process.
I remember she had her back to me;
wearing Sony walkman headphones
a sports bra and nothing else.
Running on-the-spot. Silhouetted against the glass.
Her bare feet pounding the parquet flooring.
Her Circadian Cycle all shot to hell.
It was early when I awoke, alone on the inflatable mattress.
Way too early. Far too early. Beaucoup much too early.
Outside, the snow was piled-up on the sidewalk hip-deep in places.
I sat there in shallow silence a while, propped up
by a pillow, eyes still wet with milky morning dew,
hypnotized by the veduta di fantasia illuminated behind her.
Dawn light burnishing the brownstones and skyscrapers with gold leaf.
Eldorado rebuilt on bedrock. Atlantis risen anew from the ocean floor.
A tangled mess of inlets and islands
on the very edge
of The New World;
conquered and colonized
and bent to the will of mankind.
This city of cities. This metropolis that Mammon built.
Kublai Khan’s stately pleasure dome made steel and concrete.
Putting a pot of cinnamon coffee on to boil,
I managed to persuade her to rejoin
me back beneath the crumpled sheets.
We made love like ancient Minoans;
cracking open our outer shells
and letting loose our astral forms
to roam amongst the space dust
- whilst 20 floors below, the background
vacuum-cleaner hum of Manna-hata
built gently towards its Gershwin crescendo.

Schenectady County, New York State Of Mind

If a one-handed
Charlie Kaufman
stood there clapping,
in a facsimile of a lonely forest
built entirely within a metaphysical warehouse,
and there was
no-one there to hear him...
would he still make a sound?

Trailer for 'Synecdoche, New York'

Elstree’s First Human Hungry-Man Dinner

That’s me. The Red Mafiya wiseguy
being slowly cooked alive in the
industrial-sized microwave on Stage 5.
The prize jamook in the black polyester suit,
with the leather shoes, the st. christopher
and the rose tattooed on his chest.
I’ve been working hard on my dentalization.
Placing the consonants at the back of the front teeth.
Keeping the tongue thick and forward.
Making the L-sounds dark and heavy.
Giving the H-sounds plenty of air.
If in doubt, pout. If in doubt,
push the lips forward and think
good strong Russkaya thoughts.
Think Gorky Park. Think Vladivostok.
Think Astrakhan Oblast.
Think Sputnik 2 and Vostok 1.
Think Chechnya, Bolshevik and Stolichnaya.
I must’ve missed that day at actor’s school
when we worked on how best to simulate
having your internal organs
dielectrically superheated from the inside
by a constant stream of non-ionizing radiation.
But this much I know for certain; they forgot
to prick my skin before tossing me in here.
Think Glavnoe Upravlenie Ispravitelno-trudovykh LAGerej.
Think Komityet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosty.
Think Constantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski.
An average human body is between 60 and 70% water.
That’s well over half a person’s total bodyweight.
My black polyester suit is clearly Dry-Clean only.
It’s gonna be one helluva problem getting all the viscera out.

'Kick-Ass' at Elstree Studios

'Kick-Ass' is a real-life superhero

The Sport Of Tomorrow

In the future there will be no war.
In the future there will be only Roller Derby.
Faster than frisbee disc golf.
Sexier than competitive eating.
More violent than dwarf-tossing.
Not as Flemish as vinkenzetting.
A kind of British Bulldog on wheels,
Roller Derby is a game of Blood-and-Thunder.
A game of Pluck-and-Fidelity.
A game of Style-over-Substance.
A game of Razz-and-Matazz.
6 Blockers 2 Pivots and a couple of Jammers in the rear.
Three periods of between eight and ten minutes in length.
Each period divided into a smörgåsbord of two-minute jams.
And inbetween? Plenty of good clean unsportsladylike conduct.
Ministry of Neo-Burlesque meets Queercore riot-grrrl.
Rockabilly meets NWOBHM meets Beastie-Girls meets Cybergoth.
Kiss-curls and Monroe piercings.
Polka dots and desert camouflage.
Coloured gumshields, fishnet burn and Betty Page tattoos.
Welcome to The Thunderdrome true believers.
Welcome to Do-It-Yourself Third Wave
Skate-Punk Feminism in all its glory.
Caution: Do not interfere with Rollergirls who skate out-of-bounds.
Remember: Getting a Rollergirl in your lap
is not a right
but a privilege.

London Rollergirls official website

Official list of Rollergirl names

Pease Porridge Thursday (Citation Required)

King Eric XIV of Sweden was
a warmongerer and a peasant-fucker.
Amongst many other things.
He was also certifiably insane,
which is why he was dethroned
and then imprisoned
before being murdered in 1577.
The murder weapon was a bowl
of peasoup, flavoured with arsenic,
and eaten with a silver spoon.
Ever since then, as a mark of respect
for this crazy-assed, bloodthirsty,
something-of-a-Renaissance-Man sonuvabitch,
it's become traditional for The Swedes
to eat peasoup each and every Thursday.
Not a cold Gazpacho or a spicy Menudo.
Not a Mulligatawny or a Cock-A-Leekie.
Thick, hearty, nutritious peasoup. With pork to taste.
Thou ancient, free and mountainous
peasoup of The North.
From Norrbotten County to Gotland to the Öresund Strait.
Best served with a dollop of brown mustard.
Best followed by thin pancakes, lingonberry jam
and a cheeky snifter of hot sweet liqueur Punsch.

A traditional Swedish ärtsoppa recipe

Doing A 7th Earl Of Lucan

When Lucky Lord Lucan disappeared
into the ether back in November 1974,
his Ford Corsair was found abandoned
on a residential street in the coastal town of Newhaven.
The interior of the vehicle was stained with fresh blood.
In the boot, detectives discovered a length of lead piping.
No-one knows for certain what happened to Lord Lucan,
but there are many theories. Some more fanciful than others.
Today, we’re filming on Lawes Avenue;
a carbon-copy residential street
not 5 minutes from where that
Ford Corsair was left marooned.
As daylight slowly ebbs, so the locals begin
emerging from the pebbledashed brickwork.
Shuffling and groaning as they come.
Steadily growing in number.
Armed with their mobile phone 3G technology,
their Mackenzie sportswear
and their Staffies-on-a-string.
White Cracker fireflies, attracted
by the buzzing lights of the Kino Flo
and the smell of human flesh from the big city.
Like something out of ‘Night Of The Living Dead’.
Like something with ‘Duelling Banjos’ as a soundtrack.
No-one knows for certain what happened to Lord Lucan.
But there are many theories. Some more fanciful than others.
Perhaps he took a ferry to Dieppe and became a scallop fisherman.
Perhaps he was simply eaten alive by the good folk of Newhaven.
Face facts, stranger things have happened.

The Lord Lucan Mystery

Wild Radishes Are Falling On My Head

Batten down the hatches
and pack away the easels,
there’s a mistral wind
blowing in over The Bald Mountain.
It shakes the bell-tower of the old church
and rattles the grapes upon their vines.
The wind serves merely as a precursor.
An early warning system if you will.
It heralds the arrival of a storm on the horizon.
But don’t worry. There’s no need to panic.
For the dark bumpy clouds approaching
the Lubéron Massif are in no especial rush.
For Things happen a little slower around these parts.
This storm requires some time to brood a little.
Time to procrastinate. Time to shrug its shoulders.
If this were a game of pétanque,
we’d be bracing ourselves
for a thirteen-to-love whitewash.
If this were a game of pétanque,
we’d be about to be "Made Fanny" of.
Sheet lightning strafes the nearby Plateau d'Albion.
Thunderclaps echo out across the Golden Triangle.
Further up the garrigue a stray cat comes into season.
Further up the garrigue a hunting dog is ritually slaughtered.
And then, finally, a sudden drop in barometric pressure.
Starlings swarm for the safety of nesting spots.
Earthworms pour fourth from the rich red earth.
Geckos drop their tails. Fire ants self-replicate.
There’s a phrase in the local dialect for the kind
of unrelenting deluge of raindrops soon to betide us.
Literally translated, it means “wild radishes are falling”.
The hatches are all battened down.
The easels are all packed away.
The radishes start to fall upon noble Occitania.
They pommel the ochre deposits at Roussillon
They pound the hilltop enclave of Gourdes.
They pepper the melon fields of Cavaillon.
Wild radishes fall upon the tiled roof
of a converted Farmhouse
sheltering just behind
those tall cypress trees right here.
Further up the garrigue a hand chokes the engine of an old Motocross bike.
Further up the garrigue a voice on a car radio raps in Arabic and verlan.
The lights flicker once, twice, and then they go out.


The Cloud Appreciation Society

Oh Train Of Great Speed

I’ve seen enough French New Wave to know
that the roads to Provence are piled high
with the wreckage of burning bourgeois automobiles.
The TGV high-speed locomotive is the quicker option by far.
Faster even than Japan’s famed Shinkansen bullet network.
Sculpted long ago by slow-moving glaciers
the rich rural folds of this fertile landscape
now hurtling past my window at over 500km-an-hour.
Human hands planted the potpourri of lavender fields.
Assembled the sleepy village perches hewn from local stone.
Rustic panorama sung softly into existence by troubadours.
Agricultural patchwork painted into being by Cézanne’s brushstrokes.
A true sense of place for all the senses.
The high-speed TGV locomotive is also the safer option by far.
I mean, think about it for a second; when was
the last time you heard of a cross-channel train catching fire?

The Last Live-In Vehicle Ticket Of The Weekend

The road from the Brecon Beacons National Park
to London’s golden-paved streets, is mostly uphill.
That’s the kind of thing you notice
when you’re sat behind the wheel
of a vintage Bedford CF Autosleeper called “William”.
Versatile and reliable, William is a year younger than I am.
2.3 litre overhead camshaft 4-cylinder engine with 83 brake horsepower.
I checked his oil before we left Wales.
I checked his water too. I even greased his nipples.
Best not to take any chances, eh? We can’t afford another flat.
William’s tyre-pressure is 40 pounds per square inch at the front
and 45 pounds per square inch at the rear. He has a top speed of 55mph.
Severn View. Leigh Delamere. Membury. Reading. Heston.
Vintage valve tappets going shudder-shudder
and clack-clackety-clack-clack all the way home.


The Classic Camper Club website

Wellington Boots Must Be Worn At All Times. Void If Removed.

10,000 of us stand in an open field,
10,000 of us stand, sheltering from relentless precipitation.
Fairylights twinkle in the conifers. Bubbles float across the stage.
The whin and the furze grow steadily more waterlogged.
I’m standing close enough to Mr. Samuel Beam,
that from this angle, it’s possible to count his nasal hairs.
This makes me all the more willing to forgive him
his occasionally indulgent folk-calypso noodling
and his seguewaying stadium-rawk tendencies.
May age not wither his honeydewed beard.
Nor nodules seek to tame his seraphim larynx.
Kenny Anderson and The King Creosotes are all wearing syrups.
Lightspeed Champion is wearing Harry Palmer glasses and a fish-fur ushanka.
Little Devon Sproule is wearing her Twin Oaks Community t-shirt.
Whilst little Laura Marling is wearing what looks like a fishing smock.
Jason Spaceman is wearing his trademark Jason Spaceman spaceglasses.
Richard Thompson is wearing his trademark black military beret.
And Badly Drawn Damon Gough is wearing his trademark chip on the shoulder.
The Bowerbirds from North Carolina are,
rather sensibly, all wearing gumboots.
And they're not alone. A lot of people are wearing gumboots this weekend.
Not the full 10,000 of us, no,
but plenty nuff vulcanized rubber all the same.
If only Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley could see us now!

Iron & Wine play 'The Trapeze Swinger'

Buy yourself a Green Man Festival frisbee

Stick To The Day Job

The paps are all in a lather.
The liggers shall inherit the Earth.
Fully grown men who really should know better.
Fully grown men who’d do well to stop reading their own press.
You sir, are not Bono Vox. You sir, are not Shaun Ryder.
And you, Mr. Rhys Evans, are sure as hell not the Welsh Liam Gallagher.
And, more to the point, why would you want to be?
Y Peth is Welsh for The Thing. Chi Cacha is Welsh for Dog Shit.
Should’ve stayed in the pub boyos.

Y Peth's Facebook Page

The Olympic Motto Is: Swifter, Higher, Stronger!

All eyes are on Beijing National Stadium.
An estimated one billion TV viewers worldwide.
The opening ceremony for The Games of the XXIX Olympiad
features an estimated 15,000 performers
and lasts for four-and-a-half spellbinding hours.
The Chinese, may Shangdi bless them, have pulled out all the stops.
Elsewhere, away from the media glare and the much-maligned smog,
there’s another opening ceremony going on
in the city of Hermosa Beach in Los Angeles County.
Here, in the Beach Volleyball Capital of the world,
they’re holding their very own three-day independent short film festival.
There’s a large inflatable cinema screen set-up on the manicured sand.
And the film they’ve chosen to open proceedings with, is my film.
Sure, it’s not a Silver Bear or A Golden Lion or a Hugo or a Palme d’Or,
but the organisers of this three-day independent short film festival
have chosen to award my film the gong for this year’s "Best Screenplay".
My good buddy Shawn Tyler Dufraine has kindly agreed to
jump in his Chevy K5 Blazer and drive the 5 blocks from his condo
to pick-up the prize, in my stead, from the Playhouse on Pier Avenue.
He’s no Sacheen Cruz Littlefeather, but he’s the closest thing
to an Apache Indian civil-rights protester that I can find at short notice.
The temperature in the city of Hermosa Beach today is 80°F.
Humidity is 52%. Visibility is unlimited. The wind is reportedly calm.

Hermosa Shorts Film Festival

Sacheen Cruz Littlefeather's Official Website

Tim Plester: Director's Notes Interview

The Lady In The Wheelchair

The lady in the wheelchair will be 91 on Tuesday.
She’ll be the same age as Zsa-Zsa Gabor.
Safe to say she’s learnt a few tricks in her nine decades.
She’s been married twice and speaks at least five languages.
She knows the best way to cook a freshwater carp.
She knows that spa wafers come in a variety of different flavours.
And she no doubt knows the secret recipe for Becherovka.
This year marks the Fortieth anniversary of the Soviet invasion.
40 years since Warsaw Pact troops entered her beloved city
and brought an abrupt end to the human face of Socialism.
40 years since she took the decision to send her
2 beloved sons away to safety on foreign shores.
The lady in the wheelchair knows what happened to the
head of the Stalin statue which once towered above Letná Park.
She knows that Václav Havel was a big fan of The Velvet Underground.
And she knows that student Jan Palach has an asteroid named in his honour.

With One Final Finger In Dane's Dyke

Upon this pebbled beach is where our story ends.
This is where I hang up my langseax knife.
Now am I housecarl. Now have I earned mine spurs.
July 1066 was a cruelly hot summer by all accounts.
July 2008 has proved itself to be anything but.
Yet we have persevered. Yet we have remained resolute.
Men of great spirit stand either side of me.
These proud men of the Shires. These plucky sokemen.
This brave Band Of Brothers beneath the banner of the wyvern.
No hairy star hangs overhead this night. No portents of doom.
Only a silvery Hay Moon rising high above the salty whale-road.
Illuminating the great chalk spur of Flamborough Head.
Reflected in the faces of those warmed by campfires.
I shall fight to the death for my king.
If my king or my earldorman shall die,
I shall take his place and fight
just as he would have fought.
If any man here see me taken with weakheart,
and run away, he shall remind me of this pledge
made here before my kith and my kin.

Now Then Now Then (But Not Just Yet)

When I was small, I wrote to Sir Jimmy Savile three times.
I asked him if he could fix it for me to play drums with Adam & The Ants.
I asked him if he could fix it for me to pilot the Millenium Falcon.
I asked him if he could fix it for me to visit
the offices of Marvel comics in New York City.
Sir Jimmy never wrote back.
I don’t hold it against him though.
He was a busy man. He had shellsuits to dry-clean,
Cuban cigars to smoke and lank hair to get platinumized.
A member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
and a Knight of the Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Gregory,
Sir Jimmy is an esteemed Friend Of Israel,
an Honorary Royal Marine Commando
and a Freeman of the Borough of Scarborough.
He claims to have invented both hip-hop and rap music.
He also claims to have raised over £40,000,000 for charity.
Which, whatever you choose to look at it, is a lot of sterling.
On Boxing Day 1994, Chris Morris
announced live on BBC Radio One
that Sir Jimmy had collapsed and died.
As it happens, it wasn’t true. It was just a joke.
And to this day, Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile
remains the only still-living person in the free world
to have a commemorative bench dedicated to them.
Seriously, how’s about that then?


Sir Jimmy Savile: "I Invented Zero Tolerance" clip

Replica 'Jim Fixed It For Me' badges

Sir Jimmy Savile's favourite fish and chip shop

The Human Stories behind park bench dedications

Greetings From The Grand Hotel Scarborough

The term “Faded Glory” probably
best sums-up Scarborough’s Grand Hotel.
Its austere brickwork the colour of nicotine.
Its mismatched carpets pre-decimalisation.
Completed in 1867, it looms large above the seaside town,
casting long shadows over the harbour and the South Bay.
The Grand boasts 2 Restaurants, 3 bars
and the most cases of food-poisoning
of any hotel in the North Yorkshire area.
Its 4 towers represent the 4 periodic seasons.
Its 12 floors represent the 12 months of the year.
And its 52 chimneys represent the 52 calendar weeks.
Jack Torrance, an aspiring playwright, is in the room next door.
Marion Crane is taking a shower in the room right across the hall.
The emergency number to contact reception is 6666.
(The Number Of The Beast, plus an extra 6 for good measure).
I’m trying hard not to think about how many people must
have died in the bed that I’ll be sleeping in later tonight.
Check-out, it’s worth noting, is 10am sharp.

Are You Going To Scarborough Fayre?

Cambric shirt freshly laundered and packed,
I’m ready for my journey to Scarborough Fayre.
Via Peter Sutcliffe’s old semi-detached home.
Via the nerve-centre of Hallmark Cards.
Via the silk mill, where Frederick William Jowett
founded the Independent Labour Party in 1892.
Leaving behind this Throstle’s Nest of Brontë Country.
Past the building site of Europe’s largest mosque.
Past the site of the world’s first Morrison’s supermarket.
Past thee John Smith’s brewery in Tadcaster over yonder.
Parsley, sage, rosemary
and seagull guano.

A Day Out For All The Family At Murton Park

This recreated Dark Age settlement
just beyond the walls of Jórvík
took volunteers 9 years to construct
- using wattle and daub and plenty of elbow grease.
Today the dwellings are standing-in for the hamlet of Crowhurst;
an insignificant boghole, 8 miles from the beach at Pevensey,
where William The Bastard and
his conquistadors first put ashore.
Crowhurst and the hinterland surrounding it
were razed to the ground. Its tiny population
put to sleep by sword. And borne to their Maker.
Today's a Sunday, and the abattoir next door is closed for business.
Now, I’m not an expert on these things, but it certainly smells
as if a couple of cadavers may have been left to rot overnight.
The fetid aroma, it has to be said, only helps add to the authenticity.
It’s just a shame about the constant rumble
of traffic pounding the A64 dual-carriageway.
I’m not an expert on these things,
but I suspect I'm right in thinking
that this vital trunk road
wasn’t quite so busy back in yee olden times.

Murton Park Danelaw Village

Vivat Harold Rex Anglorum!

The world sure is a big place;
full of many people seeking an escape
from the pressures and anxieties of everyday life.
Some choose to play World of Warcraft.
Some choose to learn Klingon (or tlhIngan).
Others still choose to dress in chainmail
and spend their weekends bashing 57 shades
of Living History hell out of each other
in muddy fields the length-and-breadth
of this Merry Olde Kingdom Of Enga-lond.
With a worldwide membership of around 600,
Regia Anglorum are one such organisation.
They're like the Sealed Knot "on acid". Or maybe bogmyrtle.
There’s Nigel and Roland and Big Joe.
There’s Johannah and Christine and Grace.
There’s Mike the field-archaeologist from South Wales.
And there’s Wōden-lookalike Kim, their self-appointed Eolder
(who doesn’t fight anymore, but takes 40% of all earnings).
Head shots are strictly banned in re-enactment combat.
As are all strikes to the hands and the feet and the joints.
When not skirmishing, members like to whittle wood,
drink mead and sew inside seams and undergarments
in a manner entirely appropriate to the period.
The gentleman playing King Harald Hardraada of Norway
is a systems-analyst from Nuneaton back in the “real world”.
He’s taken the day off work today.
Platted his hair before calling in sick.
Painted the skin around his eyes black with grease
whilst drinking a cup of tea from a polystyrene cup.
He’s promised to take a look at the stunt coordinator’s
broken laptop when we break for lunch.
But first, the small matter of the Battle Of Stamford Bridge...

Join Regia Anglorum

Ten Sixty Six And All Of That

Welcome to the Shieldwall fellow fyrdsmen.
Chin up. Stand firm. Parry and thrust.
You're suffering from both constipation and hayfever.
Your hauberk armour is hanging wet and heavy on your shoulders.
Your Spangenhelm helmet is digging into your nasal bridge.
Your kite-shield’s rough wooden surface is skinning your knuckles.
As we all know, The Battle of Hastings
didn’t actually take place in Hastings at all.
As we all know, the area surrounding
Senlac Ridge came to be known as Battle.
And not the other way around.
Long, fierce and bloody-beyond-belief
they began fighting at dawn on October 14th
and fought for as long as the daylight lasted.
And then they fought some more.
Neither side willing to concede.
The Anglo-Saxons refusing to yield.
The Normans refusing to give up the ghost.
The sandy stream transformed into a sanguine lake.
But don’t believe everything you read on a Bayeaux embroidery.
Tall dark and and handsome, King Harold Godwinson
was only identifiable from tattoos found upon his torso.
He was beheaded and gelded. Though not in that order.
And there was likely no arrow in his eye.
Whilst the king’s body was carried from theatre
and buried beneath stones in an unknown location,
the corpses of the 5,000 Englishmen who’d died in his name
were left to rot in the open-air for the next 10 years.
As a warning. As a deterrent. Like so much cheap manure.
The wyrds remain wholly inexorable.
The wyrds go ever as they will.
Where’s a Russian linesman when you need one?

The Buddha’s Noble 12-Bar Path

Strap it on and turn it up to 11.
Pluck it, slapp it, popp it and tapp it.
Like a snake charmer with an electric boa-contrictor.
Like a matador with a 4-string medium gauge wild bull.
Like Siegfried and Roy with a woodgrain-finished white tiger.
She tames the beast. Oh boy, she tames it but good.
Wrestles it into submission. Shows it just who’s boss.
Rest in peace Torakusu Yamaha. Your child is in safe hands.


The Chandeliers at MySpace

The Smelling Of The Greasepaint. The Roaring Of The Crowd.

Over the past 4 weeks
I’ve developed something of a routine.
Between curtain-up and my first entrance,
stage-right, I like to make myself
a cup of fairtrade gold blend tea
and sit on my own in the basement, listening
to the crackling ripples of laughter over the intercom.
After my first exit, stage-left, I push through the
double set of heavy doors marked; “Push This Door Only”
and follow the signs for; “Toilets, Studio Bar, Cloakroom”.
Whilst waiting for my second entrance, stage-right,
I find time to plan my escape route in the event of a fire.
Our designated Assembly Point is Trafalgar Square;
beneath 1st Viscount Nelson’s Corinthian Column
and across approximately 6 lanes of fast-moving traffic.
In the gap between my second exit, stage-right,
and my third entrance, stage-left,
I return Understage to collect a bunch of flowers
and a pair of sunglasses that I bought from
a Premium Outlet Mall in Cabazon, California.
Leisurely re-ascending the 10 concrete steps,
I push through the spring-loaded door marked;
“Private, Authorized Personnel Only”
and tippy-toe through the crossover and vomitory
back to the airlock between off-stage right and the thoroughfare.
Past the photograph of Samuel Barclay Beckett (1970).
Past the photographs of Alan Bates (1962) and Brendan Behan (1952).
Past the photograph of Sir Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi CBE (1960).
Inbetween my third exit, stage-right,
and my fourth and final entrance, stage-right,
I undress and lay down on the rough dark blue carpet
to pull some sit-ups in my American Apparel underpants
and my UNIQLO vest. My record is 161 (during a Thursday matinee).
After my fourth and final exit, stage-right,
I pull my clothes back on, tuck myself in,
and fasten my belt using the Flash Gordonesque buckle
I bought from a hipster store in Williamsburg NYC NYC.
I return the flowers to their vase of water downstairs.
I return the sunglasses to the prop-table.
All this helps kill a little more time.
Whilst waiting backstage for my curtain-call,
I’ve been known to skin a rabbit or two.
Sometimes I turn an imperial unit of base metal into gold.
Sometimes I fold a thousand multi-coloured origami cranes.
Sometimes I memorize Pi to its 722nd decimal place.
Mostly I remotely update my social networking status.
On a good night we can be in the pub by a quarter past nine.

He's Not The Gay Messiah, He's Just A Very Naughty Boy!

There’s late. There’s fashionably late.
And then, it’s fair to say, there’s us two.
I’ve come hotfoot direct from theatreland.
Took my bow and jumped straight in a black cab.
Rendezvoused at Waterloo station’s platform 18.
Caught the delayed 21.36 all the way to Hampton Court.
We take our seats in the historic open-air courtyard
just in time for the closing song of a 2-hour setlist.
Some might call it folly, yes, but it’s not like I’m here
to see Rufus Wainwright perform live for the first time.
And besides which, and more to the point, the tickets were free.
Cultural duties fulfilled, the locals are shuffling away in droves;
clutching Pacamacs and wicker Fortnum & Mason hampers.
They can’t be waiting around for any falsely-tabbed encores.
It’s a school night afterall, and they’ve got
Poggenpohl kitchens and miniature daschunds
and Eastern European home-help to get back for.
I first saw Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright play live
on the eve of my 30th birthday.
As time’s arrow ticked unbendingly towards midnight,
I stood next to Leonard Cohen’s only daughter
on the well-worn floor of The Bowery’s CBGB club,
and watched Rufus sing ‘Moon Over Miami’, in French,
with his sister Martha. I didn’t pay on that occasion either.
For Miss Milla Mouse, Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright
reminds her of that summer she spent living in New York.
The summer she spent out in Greenpoint
with the transvestite and the 2 puddycats.
She first saw Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright play live
in the basement of a lesbian-and-gay bookstore
just north of Manhattan's Meatpacking District.
Afterwards, he signed her shirt while she smoked a cigarette.
She wore that shirt every day for the next week.
Rufus's affected vocal warble has certainly grown on me over the years.
Tonight, his grand piano doesn’t look at all out of place
beneath the Tudor rose and the Beaufort portcullis.
This, afterall, is a royal palace used to entertainers.
Like Rufus, King Henry VIII grew up surrounded by music.
So much so, that by the tender age of 10, he had
developed into an accomplished multi-instrumentalist.
Henry VIII could play the harp, the viola and the drums.
Though he didn’t write ‘Greensleeves’, as some might have you believe.

Rufus & Martha singing 'Nuits De Miami' in Amsterdam

Smooth Fields 6AM

By the time civil dawn cracks open
the cold egg-sack of London’s albumin skyline,
the blood-boltered bummarees of Smithfield
have already been hard at it for a couple of hours.
Their forensic white smocks and barrowboy charm
handed down through the generations;
from father to son to grandson to great-grandson.
Jainists of the world take note; livestock has been
traded at this carnivore’s Mecca for over 800 years.
The rich soil here is used to the taste of offal and warm viscera.
Before Tyburn’s Triple Tree became the city’s main location
for public executions, the crown’s ceremonial killing was done right here.
Devilled kidneys of William Wallace. Sweetbreads of Wat Tyler.
Umble pie of Lollard martyrs and chitterlings of Protestant poets.
Godforsaken heretics and unholy dissidents all.
Smithfield’s temperature-controlled freezing works
sit proudly atop a labyrinth of ancient tunnels.
Tunnels which lead all the way to the hollow centre of The Earth.
Down past the churning waters of the buried Fleet river,
through the hot magma and the thick mantle
to a place where a long forgotten tribe
of homo habilis wage a daily fight for supremacy
with mighty mastodons and sabre-toothed cats.
Living life just as they did at the beginning of the Pleistocene epoch.
Unchanged in approximately 2.2 million years.
If there’s a smell, the air-con of the Audi Quattro protects me from it.
As the driver takes a right and then a left
and heads South towards the Victoria Embankment,
I lean back against the car’s cream Nappa leather interior.
The lights are on in The Golden Jubilee and The Queen Mary.
The lights are on in Westminster Palace. The lights are on in Big Ben’s Tower.
Past Lifeboat Pier. Past Temple Pier. And under The Hungerford Bridge.
The sun breaks apart the clouds above. Burns away any remaining rheum.
London awakens slowly from the blindside
and prepares to shred new hearts
and grind more bones to dust.

The House That Dennis Severs Built

Illuminated by fading candlelight,
I stand in silence on the first floor
of a terraced Georgian house on Folgate Street.
The smell of rose-hip and pomanders permeates.
There are discarded playing cards and empty oyster shells.
There is broken bone china and an unmade four-poster bed.
Huguenot silk-weavers huddle in the basement below.
A 21-gun salute sounds in the dilapidated tenement above.
The bells of St. Mary Spital prepare to chime out the hour.
I stand here, gazing into a cracked vanity mirror
hung against a painted wall. And the face
that I can see gazing silently back at me,
illuminated by the fading candlelight,
looks as if it’s being reflected in a cloud of smoke.
Or should that be smog?
Faded at the corners and daguerreotype hazy.
And the longer I stand here, silently gazing
at this turbid looking-glass visage of myself,
the more I appear to be steadily ageing.
Like Rod Taylor trapped in a George Pál stop-frame animation.
Crow’s feet deepening at the edges of my eyes.
Capillaries cracking beneath the skin on my cheeks.
Flecks of white sprouting all about the beard-line.
Outbreak of liver spots and the onset of Type Two diabetes.
Impotence, dementia and onrushing rigor mortis.
The blowflies arriving to lay their eggs.
My body fat slowly turning to soap.
Meanwhile, away from the gas-lamps and the ticking
of the grandfather clock, away on the other side of town,
a young man lies bare-chested on the pavement near Oxford Street
- sucking early evening air through an open chest wound.
Her Majesty’s police are unrolling their plastic caution tape.
It takes a moment for the eyes to adjust back
to the third generation technology and the closed-circuit TV’s.
At the end of the day, you either see it or you choose not to.
Aut Visum Aut Sumo Non.

18 Folgate Street, Spitalfields

185-187 Oxford Street, Westminster

Breaking A Leg

It’s opening night at Whitehall’s Trafalgar Studios,
and someone’s seen fit to hang a noose outside the stage-door.
On the winding concrete stairs down to the basement,
I pass the acclaimed American film-maker Neil LaBute.
I recognise him from his thick wirey beard,
his Mormon lumberjack shirt, and his two wedding rings.
In passing, I wish him well for his show this evening.
As I do so, I’m careful not to let out a whistle
or to mention the names of any Scottish plays.
Trust me, it’s so much easier that way.
It means neither of us have to waste time
spinning around, spitting over shoulders
and reciting lines from ‘Hamlet’ Act 1 Scene IV
or ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream’ Act 5 Scene II
or ‘The Merchant of Venice’ Act 3 Scene IV.
Down below, in the bowels of the building,
me and Bill Juniper are sharing a dressing room.
Bill’s busy tucking himself in
and rolling down the sleeve of his pink
Marks & Sparks "easy-iron" shirt
to hide the Trojan Records tattoo
on the inside of his right wrist.
I can tell that he's nervous about tonight.
I can tell by the bead of sweat on his upper lip.
And by the way he keep combing his hair and brushing his teeth.
Bill’s about to make his West End theatre debut.
Which makes two of us.
It’s opening night at Whitehall’s Trafalgar Studios,
and someone’s seen fit to hang a noose outside the stage-door.
Still, It could be worse. It could be a green noose.
Or a noose made entirely out of peacock feathers.
I draw a tree-of-life upon my belly button
using mascara, and prepare to tred some boards.
Trust me, it’s so much easier that way.

'Lifecoach' at Trafalgar Studios

Piccadilly Pea-Souper

We have gathered here as a body.
We have created here a space.
Our common commitment to a drawling deadpan baritone.
Mr. Bill Callahan has blown into town on a downslope wind.
His shirts are newly pressed. His suit is freshly dry-cleaned.
Tonight we are but simple God-fearing folk,
struck dumb by a collective outbreak
of acute purulent bronchitus.
Bill’s face a jumble of ticks and gurns and poker tells.
Bill’s limbs prone to myoclonic twitches and dyspraxic dance moves.
Above his silver crown, a wooden pelican pecks at its breast.
Above the pelican, The Son Of God suffers for our sins upon the cross.
Above the crucifixion, The Messiah resides
in his Father’s House - his wounded hands open wide.
Above the east window rests the copper roof.
And above that the firmament; a gateway
to a universe bigger and more beautiful
than you or I could ever possibly imagine.

Promo video for 'I Feel Like The Mother Of The World'

A City Inside Of Me

Before me, I see a blank place and a blank time.
And it's my blank place. And it's my blank time.
And also. And this is the thing. It’s your blank place too.
And it’s your blank time also. Do you see?
I see a man and a woman. And they're both heading towards 40.
For the sake of argument, let’s call them Christopher and Clair.
For the sake of argument, let’s call them Benedict and Hattie.
There’s no visible fire. And neither of them are sitting.
For the sake of another argument, why don’t we just
call them "me"? And why don’t we just call them "you"?
Christopher and Clair. Benedict and Hattie. Me and You.
All of us heading towards age 40. In a blank place.
At a blank time. In a blank city just like this one.
I see a blank diary in a plain paper bag.
I see a bloodstain in a plain coat pocket.
And I see a neighbour. And a little girl.
And the neighbour and the little girl I see
are dressed identically. Dressed like nurses.
One grown-up nurse. And one pre-pubescant nurse.
Emotion is detached. Dialogue is astringent.
Cryptic unease abounds. It’s all in the nuance.
In a blank time, in a blank place, blackbirds build their nests.
In a blank time, in a blank place, forget-me-nots are in bloom.
It’s okay though. It’s not real. None of this is real.
What I mean is this; they’re just actors. Really. It’ll all be okay.
And the blank place is probably just Richmond Upon Thames.
And the blank time could easily be today, or yesterday or tomorrow.
Neurobabble. Slight pause. White noise.
Franz Schubert's 'Six Moments Musicaux'.
Number 3. In F minor. Do you see?

'The City' by Martin Crimp

The Lad's Are All Of A Buncham

Up with the skylarks we were.
Out on the old Midlands to Oxford turnpike.
Amongst the Arcadian landmarks. Damp with dew.
Awaiting the appearance of the ragman fool.
Awaiting the song of the fiddle and the squeezebox.
I grew up around this stuff. It’s in my veins.
Much like the locally-brewed Hook Norton ale.
The ruggles of latten-bells about the shins.
The knotted hankies flapping in the morning breeze.
The rosettes and the ribbons and the double-baldrics.
Part of my heritage. Part of my legacy. Part of my very folklore.
I know it doesn’t have the exotic allure of Pamplona’s
Running of the Bulls festival, or the perceived indigenous
cultural significance of a Cheyenne Nation sundance ceremony,
but like it or not, it’s ours. It’s tradition.
As distinctly English as cricket or cream tea.
Oh this Island of Majesty. Oh this precious gemstone set on Silver Seas.
Oh this demi-paradise. Oh this new Eden.
Oh this happy breed of dancing men.
Oh this realm of The Morris.


The Adderbury Village Morris Men

'The Life Of A Fool' 3-minute documentary

Man Is Man’s Delight. But Also His Bane. Twas Ever Thus.

This isn’t a Stockholm I instantly recognise.
The tangled streets of The Gamla Stan aren’t paved
with köttbullars, lingonberries, or tubes of Kalles Kaviar.
There are no clogs, no wet snuff, no pickled herrings
and no painted wooden Dalahorses to be seen anywhere.
What we get instead are a random collection of
plain, drab, bleached-out backdrops
populated by an assortment of
plain, drab, bleached-out people
going about their plain, drab, bleached-out little lives.
Like zombies. But without the bloodlust.
A stout alcoholic woman and an Arab barber.
A disgruntled psychiatrist and a heart-broken groupie.
A kleptomaniac. A tuba player. Various business consultants.
And a shoal of grey-skinned balding Nordic men and women.
For this is the Stockholm of Roy Andersson.
A Stockholm with a distinctive visual flavour all of its own.
Just like the France of Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro
has a distinctive visual flavour all its own.
Just like the ocean and the India and the America of
Wes Anderson has a distinctive visual flavour all of its own.
Constructed from 50 single-take deadpan vignettes,
‘You, The Living’ took the veteran commercials director
three years to make, and used
an estimated 62,342 metres of film.
Benny from ABBA composed the musical score.
The incessant, recurring, futile lives of its characters
are interspersed with wistful maverick dream sequences.
Or perhaps the whole film is meant to be viewed
as nothing more than one long static waking dream?
Afterall, doesn’t "real-life" feel a lot like that sometimes?
Andersson knew Ingmar Bergman apparently.
Didn’t like him much though. They didn’t get on.
I remember reading somewhere that the Swedes drink
more cups of coffee per capita than the Italians.
But I’m not really sure if I believe that or not.

Roy Andersson's 'Du Levande'

The Scandinavian Kitchen on Great Titchfield Street, W1W

More Tales Of The Alhambra

I don’t really know what to tell you
about Granada’s illustrious Alhambra Palace.
Washington Irving's had a chokehold on that since way back.
I mean, sure, at sundown, viewed from across the ravine,
She looks every inch the triumphal pearl
set amongst Nasrid diamonds.
But by daylight, She becomes
obscured by the rugby scrum.
And for me, there’s really only
so long you can stand
looking at ruins
whilst feigning a genuine interest
in Almohad sebkas or Almoravid palms.
Does that make me a Philistine?

Once Upon A Time In Almeria

You don’t need me to tell you
how much Almeria’s Tabernas Desert
resembles the barren and gulch-ridden
lunar landscape of the American Southwest.
You’ll have seen it for yourself if you’ve ever
sat through a Sergio Leone spaghetti western.
Replace a ronin samurai with a lone gunslinger with no name.
Replace a Japanese village with a small New Mexican border town.
Give me a rolled cheroot in the corner of the mouth.
Give me a holstered Peacemaker with a silver rattlesnake grip.
Give me tanned boots, a thrift-store poncho and some 6-day stubble.
Give me those squinting operatic close-ups
and that whistle & whip-crackle soundtrack.
After shooting had wrapped, and the movie-makers had all gone home,
the enterprising local extras decided to buy-up
the film sets built by the Italian art department
and turn them into cotton-candy selling
Ye Olde Wild West theme parks.
There’s a trio of them in total. All within a mile of one other.
Seems that, for the moment at least, these lonely Badlands
are still just about big enough for the three of em!

Who Lives In A Cave Like This?

A decidedly ramshackle and dustblown kind of place,
the crumbling old Moorish settlement of Guadix
was once famed for its silver and its cutlery.
These days it’s better known for its unique approach to town planning.
For the good folk of Guadix have long preferred
simple limestone over simple bricks and simple mortar.
As the name might suggest, the Barrio Troglodyte
is more termite Hooverville than Barratt Home housing estate.
Upwards of half the population still live out here,
subterraneanly; in an extensive network of suburban caves.
Like Haywards Heath, but overrun with
Hobbit smials constructed from Barbapappa plastique.
The best burrows around boast running water,
central heating, en-suite bathrooms and satellite TV.
There are washing lines, pot plants and net curtains.
But for me, it all feels a little too much like sleeping in a catacomb.
A catacomb decorated by your least favourite auntie.

Chez Jean & Julia

Middle Earth Tours: Bag End

It's 'Barbapapa'

Captain Caveman Fansite

Mountain And Sea And Bed And Breakfast

Inger first came here from
her native Denmark 17 years ago.
It’s easy to see why she never went back.
Characterized by bric-a-brac
flat rooftops and
winding whitewash alleyways,
the higgeldy-piggeldy hamlet of Ferreirola
lies deep in the bosom of prime walker’s country.
Cherry and fig and prickly pear.
The tonk-a-tonk of the mountain goats.
Boy meets girl at the village fuente.
Inger first came here 17 years ago.
The same year, by my calculations,
as the nearby town of Huéscar finally
signed a peace agreement with her homeland;
thus bringing to an end (and not before time)
a curiously anachronistic ongoing anomalous
172 year declaration of hostilities between the 2 parties.
That’s right, from 1809 until 1981,
The Kingdom of Denmark
and the municipality of Huéscar
were “technically” at war with one other.
Something to do with Napoleon Bonaparte.
Something to do with King Fernando VII. Go figure!
Inger first arrived here from the Jutland Peninsula in 1981.
Mere happy coincidence? Somehow, I doubt it.
She swapped the smørrebrød for paella.
She traded Saint Lucia Day for Semana Santa.
She ditched the Jelling stones in favour of El Camino Real.
She fell in love. She ended the war.
She opened a bed and breakfast.


The Sierra Y Mar

Deep Song (For Federico García Lorca)

Come flow oh salty tears of ancient Andalucia.
Let bells toll. Let winds sing. Let castanets rattle-tattle.
They mourn for you still sweet gypsy poet.
And it is an epic grief. Shouldered by all.
Carried like a trembling melody along rolling red roads.
Winding. Rising. Twisting. Turning. Harmonizing.
Spirals of weeping that echo from snow-capped peak to snow-capped peak.
Preserved in the clear air like the finest cured hams.
Your blood still stains the carbonated mountain waters.
Gives it that medicinal metallic aftertaste.
You are the jasmine, the foxglove, the lemon thyme.
The evergreen myrtle. The swales of swaying broomstraw.
You are the nightingale. The turtle dove. The swifts on the wing.
You are the ruined cortijo. The broken hammam.
You are the ristras of sweet Pimiento
hanging like bell-chimes from the balconies.
See the old lady in the doorway dressed in black? She weeps for you still.
See the herdsman on horseback? See the virgin tossed in crinoline?
They mourn for you Federico García; their long lost lover.
Their father, their mother, their neighbour, their dead child.
I wonder, did perhaps the smell
of the lemon blossom fill your nostrils
that dark August evening in 1936,
when the militia-men dragged you to that lonely hilltop
and there, beneath the branches of the olive tree grove,
forced that bullet squarely through the back of your skull?
Breaking open your carefully pomaded hair?
Staining your handsome v-neck sweater so?
Your body thrown into an unmarked grave,
along with the school teacher and the toreadors
and the one, two, three, four, five thousand more that followed.
Ay yayayay! A cold dagger to the heart would’ve been kinder.

The Things We Do To Pay The Mortgage # 1

You'd never think it to look at me,
but pin a wild grey periwig to my head,
affix a salt-and-pepper
moustache to my top-lip with spirit-gum,
place me upright upon an electronic
personal assistive mobility device,
and in a certain light,
I begin to bear an almost uncanny
resemblance to noted theoretical physicist
Professor Albert Einstein (1879-1955).
Voted "Person Of The 20th Century" by Time Magazine,
Professor Einstein's brain was removed
upon his death by a man called Thomas Harvey.
The grey matter has since disappeared,
and is supposedly still out there somewhere;
along with Percy Bysshe Shelley’s heart,
the cock-and-balls of Grigori Rasputin
and The Arc Of The Covenant.
Give me a break. It was either this or the new Pot Noodle.

Northeast Veering Northwest 6 Or 7 Occasionally Gale 8 Later

I’m been out chasing cumulonimbi
in the lowlands for the past four days,
and eventually they’ve led me here.
To the so-called Fun Coast.
To the very brink of the North Sea.
A bracing north-easterly gale is howling along the sand.
Beaufort scale 8 and rising.
Bottons Pleasure Beach is closed for the season.
The donkeys have all been sent to the glue factory.
I park the SAAB 900 Turbo near a low coastal wall,
squeeze on the handbrake, and open the automatic sun-roof
to allow the polar breeze to swirl around the cockpit.
According to the Met Office, the odds of being struck
by lightning in your lifetime are about one in three million.
Higher than your chances of ever winning the lottery.
However, between the years 1942 and 1977,
U.S forest ranger Roy Sullivan was struck
on no less than seven different occasions,
and always survived to tell the tale.
Minus a toenail and a eyebrow or two.
Not once did this man from Shenandoah
go off in search of the lightning bolts,
and yet always, the lighting bolts seemed to find him.
I watch through the windscreen as the squall line
moves off in the direction of the Dogger sandbank.
Heligoland was renamed German Bight in 1956.
Finisterre became Fitzroy in 2002.
With any luck, this will all make some kind of sense in the end.
Though it’s true, I have my doubts.

Taking A Trip Down The Okkervil River

What I like about
Okkervil River’s music,
is its fragility.
The just-hatched vocals of frontman Will Sheff.
The tender mandolin strings and brushed marching drums.
Alack, tonight at The Scala, the mix is all wrong.
The mix is all middle. The mix is all muddy.
Tonight at The Scala, the okkervil river sounds silty.
It sounds clogged-up with driftwood.
Bogged-down by abandoned shopping-trolleys.
I’m forced to leave early. Long before the encore.
And that’s something I never do lightly.

Okkervil River @ MySpace

Hey You Gung Fat Choi!

First in the cycle of the Chinese Zodiac,
The Year of the Rat occurs once every 12 years.
Today’s celebrations include spectacular
dragon and lion dances around the streets
and firework displays in Leicester Square.
But for me, it’s all about the bubble tea.
If you’re wondering about the frogspawn
sitting at the bottom of the cup, we call those
little beauties the "pearls", or the “black boba”.
They’re made from tapioca starch.
And they’re the best bit. Trust me on this.
And may all the blessings
and delights
of this new rat year be yours.

Metamorphosys

A man hangs upside-down from the ceiling.
The upside-down man’s name is Gísi Örn Gardarsson.
He’s a founding member of Iceland’s Vesturport Theatre
and comes from a Mid-Atlantic gymnastic background.
Gísi son of Gardar is using his aerial prowess to bring to life
Franz Kafka’s nightmarish tale of unsuspecting
travelling salesman Gregor Samsa;
who awakens one morning
transformed in his Czech bed
into a quite monstrous vermin.
Kept permanently visible in a topsy-turvy Escheresque
upstairs room, Gísi son of Gardar’s transform-d salesman
is two-parts cockroach to at least one-part Chris Scharma.
Constantly contorting, campusing, mantle-shelving and swinging,
quite literally, from the rafters of The Lyric Hammersmith’s main house.
Chris Scharma, by the way, is a famous American rock-climber. I looked it up.
Franz Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ was first published in 1915.
That’s less than 10 years before his slow painful death from TB.
He was a man who felt “condemned” to write.
But a man unwilling to view writing as a viable profession.
A man who simply didn’t believe it was
something which should be done for money.
He is known to have given strict instructions to his life-long friend
and literary executor Max Brod, that all of his manuscripts
and all of his papers were to be destroyed upon his dissolution
(may his glorious soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life).
Luckily for us, Brod chose not to comply with those dying wishes.
Not so long ago, I attempted to visit Herr Doktor Kafka’s grave
in Sector 21 of Prague’s New Jewish Cemetery, but I arrived too late.
Finding the iron gates closed and padlocked shut for the night,
I had to content myself instead with a trip up the nearby Žižkov TV Tower.
From the observation deck, at 328-foot above the city,
I watched the sun disappear behind a Bohemian cloud
and collapse into a red dwarf on the horizon.
Several oversized and faceless sculptures of black babies
crawl up and down the polished steel of the TV Tower's Soyuz 7K-11 pillars,
but not one of these black babies look much like Gísi Örn Gardarsson.
Or, for that matter, the famous American rock-climber Chris Scharma.

Vesturport Theatre Company

watch Chris Scharma in action

Kafka's grave

One Of Those Patrick Duffy Moments

I must have fallen asleep,
for when I awoke I found her gone.
Her side of the bed absolute cold beside me.
A cool minus 273.15 degrees Celsius.
But then I noticed her bespoken spectacles resting
on the bedside table next to the alarm-clock,
and I realised that the background hum
I could hear was the sound of the pump
sustaining hot water to the bathroom shower.
Like some kind of dream.
Like some kind of imaginary story.
Like Bobby Ewing at the end of ‘Dallas’ season 9.
Believe me. She came back. From Outer Space.
Like Fallon Colby at the start of ‘Dynasty’ season 8.
Which was a different show, I know, but let's be honest
it was all very much of a muchness really.

'Dallas': Title Sequence / 'Dynasty': Title Sequence

New Corsairs On The Block

Fêted as this week’s latest “Next Big Thing”,
Pete And The Pirates hail from land-locked Royal Berkshire.
Royal Berkshire, as I’m well aware, is many a nautical mile
from the warm salty seas of the Caribbean.
But even so (as the band take to The Borderline’s
small subterranean stage), I’d be lying if I said
I wasn’t slightly disappointed by their lack of
sartorial resemblance to the buccaneers of old.
Sure, I wasn’t expecting peg-legs
or pretty parakeets on shoulders,
but a tricorn hat or two would’ve been nice.
A token Jolly Roger perhaps? A gold tooth?
Maybe a suggestion of scurvy around the drummer’s gums?
But hey, maybe that’s just the old-school
Adam & The Ants new-romantic Sexperson in me!
What quickly becomes apparent however,
is the fact that Pete And the Pirates
have saved their swashbuckling spirit for the set-list.
Such feelgood rabble-rousing boisterous energy.
Such hummable whimsical hand-clapping raucousness.
Would it be too presumptuous of me I wonder
to describe this herky-jerky shiver-me-timbers 5-piece
as the new Blur? Afterall, it's about time somebody was.
And no, The Kaiser Chiefs do not count!

Pete & The Pirates: Black Cab Session

Leaving A Good Looking Corpse

James Byron Dean done drove too fast.
River Jude Phoenix done lived too fast.
Heathcliff Andrew Ledger was probably just a little over-tired.

No Commercial Value. Non-Pornographic. For Cultural Use Only.

So, there’s this short film I made
which has been travelling the world.
It lasts for 18 minutes and 20 seconds.
Except, occasionally, it lasts for 19 minutes and 3 seconds.
Depending on the speed of your projector.
25 frames-per-second as opposed to 24.
For the record, I’ve never had a Scandinavian girlfriend.
That part of the film’s narrative is entirely fictional.
But much of the rest of the film’s storyline
is inspired by things that really happened.
I guess “based on a true story”, is how the
freelance tagline writers of the world
might choose to describe it.
The names have been changed to protect the innocent.
You know the score.
Thing is, somewhere along the line,
this offbeat little romantic comedy of mine
also began proving itself to be
somehow wonderfully miraculously
prophetic too. Life imitating art, imitating life. Or somesuch.
The girl came back. Just like she does in the movie.
If that’s not giving away the ending too much?
She sat next to me in the darkened auditorium yesterday.
Her hand-in-mine. And she saw the
heart-on-my-sleeve dedication to her
up on the big-screen for the first time
as the credits rolled, white text over black.
The screening lasted for 18 minutes and 20 seconds.
Not that either one of us was counting.

"Pop-Promo" from 'English Language [With English Subtitles]'

Waking The Gods

The Godheads are sleeping.
It’s their divine Siesta time.
At the appointed hour, they will be
awoken by the resident sadhu monks;
who will bathe and feed them
and dress them in today’s choice
of creamy silks and crimson robes
- ready to greet their adoring public.
That’s when the piped music will begin.
Shlokas will be spoken. Lamps will be lit.
And the doors to their golden shrines will slowly open.
There, beneath the luminescent limestone pinnacles
cross-legged in sockfeet upon the milky marble floor,
I will give thanks to Lord Vishnu for bringing her back to me.
I will give praise to Lord Shiva for giving us this second chance.
I will offer my blessings to Ganesh and Hanuman
for granting me the strength to form those
three-little-words
in my gullet once more.
Om Shanti my friends. Peace be unto all.

Neasden’s Shri Swaminarayan Mandir: Daily Murti Darshan

The Eighth Wonder Of The World

Old Father Thames is 535-metres wide
as it meanders around Woolwich Reach
in search of Gravesend and The Nore sandbank
and the open epicontinental sea beyond.
Standing guard against the threat of storm surges
sit the steel-plated sentinels of The Thames Flood Barrier;
their foundations sunk deep into the London chalk below.
Water levels continue to rise.
The British Isles continue to tilt.
These steel-plated sentinels stand firm. For now.
There are those who have claimed the barrier
to be “The Eighth Wonder Of The World”,
but in truth it faces some pretty stiff opposition
for that much-disputed of titles.
There’s the Acropolis of Athens for one.
And Cambodia’s Angkor Wat temple complex for another.
Then there are the 2,000-year-old Banaue Rice Terraces in The Philippines.
And the monolithic Moai statues of Easter Island.
There’s Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia cathedral.
And the Panama Canal.
And the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
And the Eiffel Tower.
And the Moscow Kremlin.
And the Empire State Building.
And the Sydney Opera House.
And Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi’s vast Terracotta Army.
There’s even the artificial Palm Islands in Dubia
and the Astrodome stadium in Houston Texas to consider.
Not to mention King Kong and WWF wrestler André The Giant.
(Both of whom are now sadly deceased).
However, to my mind, the main problem with
The Thames Barrier’s claim, is that it’s not even
the biggest moveable flood barrier in the world.
No, that particular honour goes to The Maeslantkering
- which is located in the Nieuwe Waterweg waterway in Holland.
Well, that and the fact that The Thames Barrier
would appear to closed to the public on a Bank Holiday.
Even thought the website said it wouldn’t be.

We Are Born Naked. The Rest Is Drag.

My hoofs are aching. I’ve pulled up lame.
It’s these new high-heels of mine. I’m just not used to them.
The girls in the costume truck tell me
I’ve got “nice legs for a fella”. Whatever that means.
The trick, I’ve been reliably informed,
is to tuck the genitals between the legs
and allow the lipstick
the Nicole Farhi
and the silicone in my bra
to do the hard graft for me.
The verb, as I understand it, is to "do drag."
You go T-Girl!


How To Walk Like A Woman

'Criminal Justice' on the BBC

A Silent Light. A Holy Light.

Time lapses. The Earth undercranks.
Night sky gives way to dawn sky
gives way to widescreen daybreak
gives way to Old Colony
of Christian Anabaptists nestling in
Neo-Biblical landscape of Northern México.
Plautdietsch dialect carries on the morning breeze.
Bread is broken. Ears of green corn stand tall.
The enfant-terrible is slowly working his magic.
The enfant-terrible is slowly weaving his spell.
Allowing ifluence of Tartovsky and Dreyer to seep on through.
Shows us Love. Shows us Betrayal. Shows us Forgiveness.
Teases out visual and spiritual tour-de-fucking-force.
Rains fall. Heavens rotate. Light flares in the lense.
Out through open window flies cabbage white butterfly.
Out through open window, and off
over hill and over dale
and across bend of slow-moving stream.
On to the place where the sun sets and the cattle low.
On to the place where the first stars twinkle from
on high.

Carlos Reygadas's 'Stellet Licht'

A Bolt From Out Of The Blue

To call it a bolt out of the blue doesn’t really do it justice.
For this is a bolt from somewhere beyond blue.
A bolt from somewhere beyond the indigo.
A bolt from somewhere beyond the violet.
A bolt from somewhere beyond
the electromagnetic spectrum altogether.
Blindside. Southpaw. Punchdrunk. Goethe.
I’m the Great White Hope; flat on my back on the canvas.
I can see the stars. I can hear the tweetie birds.
I think my lip might be bleeding. Again.

Le Long Weekend/Weekendje

Tail firmly between legs,
I return to the Mainland smelling
of waffle syrup and stale cigarillo smoke.
My stomach distended by humble pie.
My backside feasted upon by lions.
Like a lemming to the slaughter.
Like a burro donkey in search of a carrot.

50,000-Odd Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong. Can They???

I had a clear choice tonight;
the Santa Fe Centre Of Contemporary Arts in
The Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi,
or The Galtymore Irish Social Club on Cricklewood Broadway.
Naturally, I chose the later.
Instead of the yucca flowers and the broken mesas,
I chose to come and watch an
ambling rambling shuffling shambling
creased crumpled cantankerous
non-sensical Illegible mumbling
50-year-old Mancunian strut his stuff.
Santa Fe is revered for its Pueblo Revival Style architecture.
And sure, while it may also possess
the oldest mission in the United States
and be blessed with arguably the
greatest sunsets anywhere in the known world,
it doesn’t have anything quite like Mark Edward Smith.
For he’s a true one-off.
And to hell with the mould.
Broken or otherwise.
Normal Social Club service will be resumed next week;
just in time for the annual Galway Association Dinner Dance.

Mark E. Smith reads the football results

Colour Him Lucky

If you laid all out the plastic
Evel Kneivel Stuntcycle toys
sold during X-Mas 1976 end-to-end,
they'd stretch clear across Idaho’s Snake River Canyon.
Clear across that Magic Valley and back again.
Dressed in his clean white leathers,
his shoulder-cape and his star-spangled crash-helmet,
Robert Craig “Evel” Kneivel Jr. always looked to me like
some kind of a real-life honest-to-goodness American superhero.
A kind of Elvis meets Liberace meets
Gary Cooper meets Superman. On a Harley Davidson.
As a child, I watched in awe as he jumped
a succession of cars, cargo vans, mountain lions,
Mack trucks, London routemasters and Greyhound buses.
All fuelled by true-grit chutzpah and Wild Turkey 101.
As a child I watched him fracture
his jaw and his skull
and his sternum and his pelvis.
And both his arms. And both his ankles.
And both of his clavicles too.
I watched him break his lower and his upper back.
I watched him break his knees and his shins
and his hips and his femurs
and his nose and his toes and,
at one time or another, all 24 of his crazy cockamamie ribs.
For Evel’s was a life of casts, comas and blood-transfusions.
His battered body rattled with pins and plates.
In my time, I’ve never so much as suffered a dislocated finger.
But then, I never tried strapping rocket engines
to the side of my Raleigh Tomahawk Mark 2 neither.
And that’s why Robert Craig Kneivel
will always be the Daredevil’s Daredevil,
and why I’m destined to be just
another hairdresser’s son from North Oxfordshire.

Dirty-Stop-Out

She tells me she didn’t sleep too well.
I know how precious the night is for her
and her fellow followers of The Path Of The Pollen.
I worry that her visit to the Dreamtime may have been disrupted
by my presence beside her in the fold-down hideaway bed.
But she tells me it wasn’t that. That I wasn’t to blame.
That, infact, I was a very unostentatious sleeper.
That I didn’t snore. Or steal the sheets. Or catch her with any stray elbows.
Apparently, I was very quiet and still all the night through.
So quiet and still infact, that at one point
She felt compelled to put her ear to my chest
to check whether or not I was still drawing breath.
Like mothers do with newborns.
“I only have soya milk”, She says. “That’s okay,” I reply.
“Is Rooibos alright?” She asks. “Rooibos is fine”, I reply.
“Do you have any honey?” I enquire.
“Honey”, She replies; “is not a problem. Honey I have plenty of.”
It’s been a long long time since anyone’s made me a cup of tea in bed.
And let me tell you this; it tastes like sweet hot Manna From Heaven.

Zachary & His High-Flying Club

Behold the fresh-faced chansonnier
from the rose-coloured desert.
Zach Condon first picked-up a trumpet at the age of 15.
A year later, he dropped out of high-school
and hitchhiked around Europe. There, his head was swayed
by the brass of Boban Marković and Goran Bregović
and the award-winning imagery of Emir Kusturica.
There he developed an addictive taste for
Romany riffs, Gitanos grooves and Balkan beats.
Luckily, I’ve come prepared. My stomach is lined with
tender beef goulash, potato pancakes and smetana,
all washed down with a swift shot of 40% Wódka.
The Boy Wonder cradles his golden flügelhorn
to his skinny white New Mexican shoulder like a Conch Shell,
as he warbles away in his hypnotic bittersweet baritone.
The thrift-store Greenpoint Orkestrar strike up a melody.
It’s raucous, glorious, brash, melodramatic and full of feeling.
This is the sound of a travelling Francylvannian Mariachi circus.
This is New Mexican gypsy folk pop at its best.
This is the restless rat-a-tat spirit of a wandering wunderkind.
Zach Condon has never been to the Lebanon,
but he understands that the Mediterranean
seaport of Beirut is nothing if not an urban palimpsest.
The kind of place with many layers.
The kind of place where things come together.
The kind of place where cultures can collide.
So sure, Gogol Bordello may have the “authenticity”,
but Zach Condon has the heart
and the soul
and god bless him,
the enchanting tunesmithery too.
Long may he masquerade. Ba-da-bing! Ba-da-boing!

Beirut perform 'Nantes' on the streets of Gay Paris

Year Of The Shepherd's Bush Dog

I’ve waited a long time to see Iron & Wine live.
Too long probably.
I’ve turned down paid work to keep this evening free.
My expectations are running high. Too high. Unrealistically high.
Thing is, from where I’m standing,
the delicate melodies and the fragile vocals
feel altogether smothered by the full 8-piece band.
The proscenium arch isn't helping matters either.
It’s a mere 31-feet wide. The stage itself a scant 30-feet deep.
And there’s a capacity crowd of 2,000 in attendance.
Thing is, on a night like tonight,
with me in this frame of mind,
that feels like one thousand
nine-hundred
and ninety-nine people too many!
These lonesome tales of redemption, resurrection
and regret need space. Space to drift. Space to infect.
Open air to vibrate sweetly along.
Deserted dirt roads and coiled steel wires to chime against.
Arroyos and floodplains and sparse chaparral.
Closing tight my eyes, I allow my totem animal
to lead me in my sockfeet through the soft smoke
to a place far-faraway from this claustrophobic safe-house.
Sam Bean is instead stood waist-deep
in the last windswept cornfield before
sunbaked terracotta borderlands take hold of the country.
There are vapour trails in the darkening Big Sky overhead.
The grackle birds are cackling in the eucalyptus branches.
Scent of bloodweed. Scent of catclaw. Scent of candelilla.
I’m sat on an old moth-bitten couch
abandoned in an empty pot-holed parking lot
illuminated by the flickering bulb of an interstate motel sign.
I’m drinking Tennessee whiskey straight from the square bottle.
A sweatheart waits for me on a bare mattress nearby.
Who says I’ve been reading too much Cormac McCarthy?

Momijigari

Driving South-West on Route A303,
a few thousand feet of 35mm film-print on the back-seat,
I have time to reflect on the changing of the seasons.
The Japanese have a special name for this time of year.
They call it the-time-to-sit-and-watch-the-leaves-change-colour.
Or momijigari. The Americans, for their part, call it The Fall.
The countryside is on the turn.
The green is putting on its Autumnal wardobe.
It’s harvest month. The shedding time.
Now is the season of bounteous fecundity.
I’m heading for the rich soils of the Devonshire Hams.
Destined for a particular curve of the River Of Dart.
For there, at the head of the river’s tidal range,
is a gentle hilltop I know like the back of my hand.
Me and the 28-acres of medieval estate that sit
atop that gentle hillside have history. We go way back.
That gentle hilltop helps bind me, inform me and nourish me still.
There’s the Peter Randall-Page and the Henry Moore.
There’s the Tiltyard and the Glade and the Azalea Dell.
There’s the handsome flight of steps and the steep grass terraces
and the odd-toed bronze donkey
and the blackened bark of the 2,000-year-old yew tree.
Kicking through fallen foliage in those gardens of Earthly Delight
is nothing new for me at this time of year.
To my mind, there’s no better place on God’s Earth
to sit and watch the leaves change colour.
As leaves invariably do.
There, on the left-hand side of the 14th-century courtyard,
under the arch, is where you’ll find the Grade-1 listed Barn Theatre.
The silver-screen inside is where I saw
my first Almodovar and my first Altman.
It’s a honour to be screening my work on that self-same screen.
It’s an honour to have studied at that unique college.
It breaks my heart to know its doors will soon be closing forever.

On The Way Home From The Jeffrey Lewis Gig...

With a dozen fresh bagels tucked under my arm,
I wend my way home from The Jeffrey Lewis & The Jitters gig.
Flames burn outside Hawksmoor’s exalted Christ Church.
Hoxtonheads queue for ale outside the notorious Ten Bells.
I’m happy walking the soused streets of Spitafields tonight.
I’m in no rush to reach the tube. I’m in no rush to get to my bed.
The last time I saw Jeffrey Lewis play, he started with a joke.
The last time I saw Jeffrey Lewis play,
he brought along his painted guitar
and his girlfriend Helen
and his brother Jack and his Uncle Louie too.
“Professor” Louie Lewis, no less. Who provided support.
And things were no different tonight I’m glad to report.
The joke, the girlfriend, the younger brother and the uncle;
all were present and correct. Why change a winning team?
The last time I saw Jeffrey Lewis play,
he appeared to be thinning badly at the crown.
Truth be told, his hair looked like it’d been falling out in clumps.
Clogging-up the drainage system on the Lower East Side no doubt.
If anything, Jeff’s male-pattern baldness
has escalated since the last time I saw him play.
Has he ever considered plugs, I found myself wondering?
Or cosmetic transplant surgery?
Or some finasteride? Minoxidil? Mane-For-Men?
Chinese knotweed? Aerobics? Or a little Syrup-Of-Figs?
Or maybe just a bar of soap, a little hot water
and some good old-fashioned disposable razors?
I wend my way past Rough Trade’s new flagship store,
where earlier this evening I chanced upon an impromptu
live performance from Alt-Country freak-a-Billy Jim White.
I wend my way down a sidestreet where once I bought
a tinfoil carton of brown Liberty Cap magic mushrooms.
Back when it was legal. Back when there was a loophole in the law.
It really wouldn’t be too much of a diversion
for me to wend my way a little further Eastwards;
past the blue door behind which dwells the girl I still adore.
Maybe I’d find the courage to take a deep breath and knock.
Maybe I’d find her at home, and maybe, just maybe,
she’d invite me in for a while from out of the rainclouds.
We could slice the bagels in half, pile them up,
and place them carefully in the freezer compartment.
It really wouldn’t take me too far out of my way at all.
But the two of us haven’t spoken in such a long long time.
And it’s been even longer than that since last we communicated.
I’m happy walking the soused streets of Spitafields tonight.
I’m happy for the drizzle to fall upon my receding hairline.
If I'm lucky, it might suddenly wash me into a storm-drain,
along with the rest of the flotsam and the jetsom
and the chancers
and the have-nots
and the oh-so-might-have-beens.

I'm In Control

The exterior of the terraced house in Macclesfield
is the real exterior of the terraced house in Macclesfield,
(where Ian Kevin Curtis was found hanging on May 18th 1980).
The exterior of the employment exchange in Macclesfield
is the real exterior of the employment exchange in Macclesfield,
(where Ian Kevin Curtis worked a day job whilst gigging in the evenings).
The exterior of the crematorium in Macclesfield
is the real exterior of the crematorium in Macclesfield
(where the remains of Ian Kevin Curtis lay buried beneath
a small memorial stone inscribed; "Love Will Tear Us Apart").
‘Control’ is being hailed as the coolest British film of the year.
It’s been nominated for 10 British Independent Film Awards.
And whilst my false beard doesn't exactly steal the show,
it does help enhance proceedings. For all of 90 seconds-or-so.
After spending the day up an old oak tree in Rochdale,
I now find myself at the film's low-key Madchester premiere;
fittingly, given the film's subject matter, a mere stone's throw
from the city's once legendary Haçienda Club. Now luxury flats.
First-time director Anton Corbijn has a personal connection
to the doomed life of Ian Kevin Curtis and the band Joy Division.
And the stellar beauty of the movie’s monochrome cinematography
betrays his background as a rock photographer of some repute.
In 1979, Corbijn left his home on Hoeksche Waard Island,
south of Rotterdam, and set sail for the North Of England.
There he first met and famously photographed Ian Kevin Curtis
Bernard Sumner, Hooky and Stephen Morris for the ‘NME’.
He claims he could barely understand a word the band said to him.
His English, it seems, wasn’t not so very good back then.
Corbijn took a chance casting Sam Riley as his leading man,
but Riley has rewarded him by managing to get
that iconic epileptic foxtrot just about pitch-perfect.
Corbijn has proved himself a Dutchman of passion.
A Dutchman of energy. A Dutchman of vision.
Corbijn, like Francis Ford Coppola before him,
remortgaged his own home to keep the wheels of production turning.
He has chosen to wear a pair of silver sneekers for his big night.
I think they might be Nike’s, though I can’t be sure.
Either way, he must feel like he’s walking on air right now.

A Vilnius Autumn

There are dried dark blood stains
upon the concrete steps at Taurakalnis park.
An extra, dressed as a member of the Prussian infantry,
and wearing a tunic from a Prague costume house,
had a seizure here yesterday afternoon
and went down like a grouse on the Glorious Twelth.
Maybe he had time to take in the panorama as he fell?
Gedimino Castle. The Hill Of Three Crosses.
The snaking banks of the River Neris down below.
The old red rooftops and the many church spires.
Somewhere in the region of 40 church spires.
None too bad for a city which didn't officially
embrace Christianity until the mid 14th century.
A steady parade of sightseers drift overhead in
baskets propelled by the Archimedes principle.
Heading west towards the setting sun.
Heading west towards Poland.
Floating over fields where the occupants
of the ghettos were marched like diseased cattle
and “liquidated” by the guns of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen.
Floating past the the hypodermic spike of the TV tower,
where the tanks of the occupying Soviet forces
rolled over the bones of 14 unarmed protestors,
cracking skulls, splintering bones, spilling civilian blood.
All of which brings me back to the dried sark stains
upon the concrete steps at Taurakalnis park.
22,000 were killed or wounded
at the real-life Battle Of Waterloo in 1815.
So one minor head-wound’s probably about par for the course.


'Battle Of Brian' Beechams commercial

Quality Food Served All Day

The New Piccadilly Café Is a Soho institution.
They broke the mould after they built this place.
She’s a true landmark. The last of her kind.
A veritable Tasmanian Tiger amongst Pret A Mangers.
The Rosie Lee is stewed. The rice pudding is from a can.
The mashed potato is instant and the lasagne comes with chips.
It's true, the medieval cusine won’t be winning any Michelin stars,
but that's all part of The New Piccadilly’s charm.
That and the pink enamel espresso-maker.
That and the Festival Of Britain inspired formica table-tops.
That and the well-loved Thonet chairs
and and the horseshoe-shaped menu board.
All originals. Not a reproduction amongst them.
I know I've been neglecting her of late, but I have my reasons.
I've had other old-school eateries to frequent:
huevos rancheros and freshly-squeezed OJ to order at
Keedy's Fountain & Grill on Highway 111, Palm Desert,
a 10-inch stretch chili dog to stand in line for
at Pink's stand on the corner of Melrose and La Brea.
When The New Piccadilly closes her doors tomorrow evening
and the red neon “EATS’ sign is extinguished for the last time,
Mr. Lorenzo, the padrone of this Cathedral Of Caffs,
has vowed to take a sledgehammer to the place.
He wants to smash apart the antique
fixtures-and-fittings with his own two hands.
He’s worked at the counter-top here his entire adult life.
For some 50 years or more. So who can really blame him?
It’s very much his royal prerogative.
Amongst the many regulars in their widow’s weeds
is a girl I had an infatuation with back in the Springtime of 1997.
She always had a thing for older men. Older men than me.
She was sweet 19 when we first met, and would prove
to be a something of a template for what was to follow.
She wasn’t the last precocious little upstart
I fell for, oh-no, but she was certainly the first.
Sent down as a warning which I failed to heed.
She joins me in my booth and orders a cup of hot coffee.
Her hair no longer bottle blonde. Her wonky smile still intact.
Since last we met, she’s been training to be a shaman.
She's spent time in the Amazon rainforest
with the Cofán Indians of Santa Rosa de Guamuez.
Journeying to grand cities past and future.
Witnessing the primordial origins of humankind.
Developing both her Inner and Outer Raindow.
She finishes her hot coffee and orders a bowl of peach melba.
For the final time of asking.

Today's Special: New Piccadilly (Short Film)

Oldest Pot Plant In The World

The broodboom Cycad first arrived
on the banks of the Thames back in 1775.
Fair to say it's seen it's fair share in all that time.
The Uprising in the American colonies.
The expansion and contraction of The British Empire.
The ages of Boz Dickens and Saucy Jack.
The coming of the railways and The Industrial Revolution.
A Great Stink, a Great Famine, a Great Depression and a Great Smog.
The construction of The Crystal Palace.
The re-location of The Crystal Palace.
The immolation of The Crystal Palace.
The Battle Of Cable Street and The Troubles in Ireland.
2 World Wars and 1 World Cup.
New Wave, Punk and The Carnabetian Army.
The end of apartheid in it's homeland.
The Brixton Riots. The King’s Cross Fire.
And four terrorist bombs on a July morning.
The broodboom Cycad’s been steadily growing away
at an average rate of about 2.5 cm a year.
That’s 2.5 cm a year for the past 232 years.
It’s not in any kind of a rush that’s for sure.
Now, it’s my sister who possesses the green fingers in my family.
My fingers, in stark contrast, are toxic black. All full of glyphosate.
I fear I’ll kill this living fossil if I stand near it for too long.
And I don’t want that on my conscience.
Best I beat a hasty retreat to The Temple Of Aeolus,
and leave this ancient evergreen to continue photosynthesizing.
Or whatever that thing is that plants do.


The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew

The Poet Laureate of Skid Row

Section Ocean View,
plot number 875,
just off Avalon Drive
in The Green Hills Memorial Park
is where you'll find the final resting place
of one Henry Charles Bukowski Junior (1920-1994).
It's a short Sunday morning drive along the PCH 1.
Deeper into the Southland; through Redondo Beach
and up into the quiet affluent bluffs of The Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Buk has a decent view of the Pacific from up here
(and the less scenic US Navy Fuel depot away to the left).
The simple granite tombstone,
illustrated by a simple carving of a pugilist,
carries the simple epitaph; "Don't Try".
Buk, I can’t help noticing, has a woman buried on either side of him.
A woman to his left. And a woman to his right.
A woman either side of him down in the deep ground.
A woman either side for the long sleep of the sweet by-and-by.
A woman either side for the journey into bardo and beyond.
I dare say The Dirty Old Bastard would’ve liked that.


Send Hank Some Flowers

An English Man In Hermosa

When I leave North London
and move to the West Coast of California,
I'll choose to move here. To Hermosa Beach 90254.
I'll sit upon the hot golden sand
and watch the bikini-clad girls
at the world-famous beach volleyball nets.
I'll sit upon the hot golden sand
and watch the rollerbladers along The Strand,
competing for space with the bicycle crusiers
and the joggers and the baby-strollers.
I'll sit upon the hot golden sand
and watch the boogieboarders shake-a-shaka
on that sweet South Bay surf.
The morning haze slowly burning off to reveal
Santa Catalina Island floating like a faerie castle on the horizon.
The gentle sea breeze will play havok with my hair,
but if worst comes to worst
I'll just buy me a hat to wear.
On the way back to the apartment,
I'll swing by the corner store and collect
some groceries in a brown paper bag.
Maybe stop for a weiner at Skooby's Hot Dog Shack.
I'll boil some water on the stove so
that I can sit in the yard and watch the sunset
with a mug of imported Russian Caravan tea.
You’re right, it's not Venice 90291 or Santa Monica 90401
but I think that's why I like it so.
It reminds me of Finchley in a strange way.
Hermosa isn't really Los Angeles.
Just like Finchley isn't really London.
I’ve always found the outskirts to be more interesting.
I prefer life on the margins. I prefer life on the fringes.
I prefer life in the sticks. In the Burbs. In the Boondocks.

KMIR-TV: Good Morning Palm Springs

The headlines this Tuesday morning:
At least 2 dead in fatal ambulance accident…
NFL quarterback pleads guilty to dogfighting charges…
Embattled Attorney General announces resignation…
It's 5.30am. The lunar eclipse ended half-an-hour ago.
Only me, the cicadas and the water-sprinklers are awake.
Rancho Mirage, clear, 84 degrees.
Banning, clear, 84 degrees.
La Quinta, clear, 86 degrees.
I’m sat in a canvas chair opposite a man called Gino.
He’s clean-cut, well-drilled and borderline thermoplastic.
Gino’s quoting Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde.
Or is it George Bernard Shaw?
Thousand Palms, clear, 84 degrees.
Indian Wells, clear, 84 degrees.
Cathedral City, clear, 84 degrees.
Gino was born and raised in Orange County.
His wife’s Portuguese and they have a young daughter.
Gino’s been in the TV News business for 10 years now.
Since 1997. He warns me that we’re about to be broadcast live
to the fine-and-upstanding people of the Coachella Valley.
Wish me luck…

Little Miss Kidnap Yourself

The mighty Hawk sees all from 10,834-feet.
From far above the dry desert floor of the Cahuilla Basin.
Perched on-high atop San Jacinto Peak,
he trains his nimble eyes upon the Inland Empire below.
And in the darkness, he sees the lights
of the resort community at the northwest end of the valley.
He sees the rental car parked opposite the Mexican restaurant.
He sees the two figures slumped against its hood.
He sees the tequila and lime dancing in their eyes.
I've never "made out" with an American girl before.
This is a first. And truth be told, it tastes a little salty.
Though that may have something
to do with the unseasonal humidity.
Tattoos of the original serpent run the length of both her arms.
Her eager tongue feels like it’s been pierced with a barbell.
Little Miss Kidnap Yourself is charming me but good.
Little Miss Kidnap Yourself is benumbing me but good.
I can sense my pineal gland slowly expanding.
My mouth filling with cordite. Teeth vibrating. Lips pulsing.
Muscle cramps, dizziness, temporary blindness.
She’s threatening to drag me back to her Joshua Tree adobe.
She’s threatening to take me to her ample bosom
for the night, eat me alive
and leave my pale English bones for the coy-otes.
The mighty Hawk sees all of this, but keeps his beak closed.
The mighty Hawk sees all of this, but keeps his wings clipped.
For the heat does funny things to folk
and the mighty Hawk knows this. He knows this only too well.
Instead, He shifts his gaze elsewhere;
Out towards the Western shores of the Salton Sea.
Out towards the furthermost edge of the world.

The Former Playground Of The Stars

Back in The Swinging ‘40s and The Nifty ‘50s
you couldn't move along Tahquitz Canyon Way
without bumping into the likes of
Bing Crosby, Humphrey DeForest Bogart,
Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Jnr or Judy Garland.
They came here to play golf and to sip cocktails.
They came here to escape the glare of the West Coast spotlight.
Al Jolson, Wladziu Valentino Liberace
and that arch-reclusive Greta Garbo too.
The Chairman Of The Board and his Rat Pack
came to Riverside County to play high-stakes baccarat
around a swimming-pool shaped like a piano.
Elvis and Precilla came here for their honeymoon in 1967.
Steve McQueen and his Porsche 356 Speedster
visited so many times during the early Nineteen Seventies,
that they knew the tarmacadam of Vista Chino Drive
and Avenida Caballeros like the backs of their hands.
Known more these days as a haven for senior citizens
and those of the gay-and-lesbian persuasion (33%),
Palm Springs averages 354 days of sunshine per year.
Now, that’s one hell of a lot of sunshine, let me tell you.
354 days of glorious sunshine and less than 6 inches of rain.
Date Palms thrive in that kind of climate. Which is lucky for them.
It helps their fruit develop high glucose, fructose and sucrose content.
Unfortunately for me, I’m not a Date Palm. I’m nothing of the sort.
I'm busy melting out here. I can feel my brain oozing from my ears.
Little wonder former mayor Sonny Bono enjoyed skiing so much.
The Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians
survived in the harsh desert for 500 years
without the need for Starbucks coffee houses
or used-car dealers or steak houses or casinos.
Their original name for the area was "Se-Khi",
which roughly translates as "The Place Of The Boiling Water".
Today, its 110°F in-the-shade, so it’s something
of a blessed relief that the cinemas are air-conditioned.
Less blessed, is the fact that most of the films
I've seen at this year’s Shortsfest blow so hard
they're in danger of coughing-up their own sigmoid colons!
Mad dogs and English short film-makers anyone?

Spirit Of The Green Man

The music began in the elsewhere;
carried over the Black Mountains on a stormcloud.
The notes fell steadily and rhythmically
against the tightly-stretched skin of the tipi.
Soaking the greasy grass. Falling upon Grandmother Earth.
Turning the Usk Valley to slurry as the Mighty Sugarloaf looked on.
Down here amongst the many beards and the elk antlers.
Down here amongst the sagebrush smoke
and the burning tobacco bundles.
Let peyote juice flow. Let the mystery dance commence.
Watch the notes as they continue to fall.
Down upon Findlay Brown.
Down upon Kenny Anderson.
Down upon the girl from Tunng.
Down upon Emma-Lee Moss and Johnny Flynn.
Down upon iccle Joanna Newsom.
Down upon Steven 'Singing' Adams.
Down upon Andy Cabic, James Yorkston,
Willy Vlautin, Vashti Bunyan and Diane Cluck.
Down upon the many-headed Earlies.
Down upon old-timer John Renbourn and local boy Gruff Rhys.
Down upon Oh-Great Sage Naturalismo Devendra Banhart.
Down upon David Ya-Ya Herman Düne and Neman Herman Düne.
Down upon Portland's Stephen Joseph Malkmus. Down upon The Jicks.
Down upon the boys formerly known as The Beta Band.
The moon and the stars move in perfect harmony.
We emerge from the stormclouds purified. Born anew.
Cleansed by the sacred rains.
Cleansed by the sacred winds.
Cleansed by the sacred music.

Revelation! [1992]

Somewhere there is a land in the sky.
And this land will be called Memphis Tennessee.
And this land will build great cities of gold and medallion.
And these cities will be filled
with towering platform shoes
and rows-and-rows of silk flares,
which will be immaculately dry-cleaned.
And it will rain hair laquer morning, noon,
and then some more at noon again.
And this land will grow fat and drunk.
And drunk and fat. And just plain fat.
And on every street corner there will be
a corner of a street.
And there will be huge television screens,
which will roam the city. And they will have Emm-Tee-Vee!
And there will be hotels that are heart-broken.
And jailhouses that are rocked.
And truly this land will have a king.
And this king will sit upon a throne.
And it will be a throne of rockabilly. And a throne of rollabilly.
And lo, the faithful will gather around, and buy
merchandise.

This Much I Know About The Republic Of Estonia

Home to the oldest Christmas tree in the world,
The Republic Of Estonia is the smallest
and most northerly of the 3 Baltic States.
Its capital city is Tallinn.
Its currency is the kroon.
The time difference is only 2 hours.
This much I know about The Republic Of Estonia.
It's not much, I know. But it's a start.

Meeting Mister (Beef) Iron & Wine

They say you should never meet your heroes,
and they're probably about right on that score.
But when your heroes look like
Jesus-in-faded-denim
and make the kind of
delicate wind-swept lullaby folk music
to crack hearts open upon,
I'm willing to make an exception.
That Sam Beam is a rolling tobacco
kind of a guy comes as little surprise.
What's perhaps more of a revelation
is the fact that, despite being raised in Sodom South Carolina,
our host is a big fan of
Time Lords and Gallifrey
and Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space.
You wouldn't think it to look at him.
Or maybe, just maybe, you actually would.
We leave Sam sipping on a mohito
beneath the neon glow of the hotel entrance.
His lion's mane of a beard all aglow in the fuzzy 1am light.
His new album, 'The Shepherd's Dog' isn't out until next month,
but I already have the sneaking suspicion
it's going to be one of my favourite longplayers of the year.

'Naked As We Came' promo-video

The Principal Ingredient Of Bramble Jam Being...

For this seasonal recipe you will require:
1 Hampstead Heath (all ripe unto harvest).
1 delightful female friend from Brontë country.
1 kg of blackberries.
350g of eating apples.
A selection of sterilized jam jars.
Some dihydrogen monoxide.
And sugar. Lots of sugar. Mainly sugar infact.
Bring to boil, and simmer
(stirring occasionally)
until setting point is reached.
Skim, pot, cover and wait until morning.
Best before Michaelmas eve.

Just Another Wretched Sunday Morning

You'd think I might be used to this by now.
My head all alone on the pillow.
A carpet of last night's bourbon on my tongue.
You'd think I might be used to this by now, but no.
I've been behaving like a puppy-dog chasing it's own tail.
Like a fool.
Like a chump.
Like a patsy.
Like a motherfucking shmuck.
There are simply too many people in London and not enough space.
Bottom line. There’s no way around it. It’s just the way of things.
We live all ontop of each other; stacked corpses in our private catacombs.
On some mornings, the walls and the ceilings feel paper thin.
I can hear the neighbours breathing in the flat upstairs.
I can hear the neighbours in the flat next door slurping tea.
Above and to the left of me I can hear my neighbours laughing.
Through the wall. Through the ceiling.
And it feels like they're laughing at me.

Some Of The Very Best S-E-X That I Ever Did Have

Some of the best S-E-X I ever had
came as a direct result of reading Bukowski.
She sat on the unmade bed
in the corner of the bedroom, and read aloud to me
from the pages of Hank's third published novel (1978).
It was a Friday afternoon, and that's what got it all started.
That’s what got the juices a-bubbling.
Boy, it’s hard to beat a spot of afternoon S-E-X.
I find myself growing to love Bukowski
more and more with every passing year.
I find myself seduced tirelessly
by The Old Sot’s genuine self-loathing
and his weary disdain for his fellow man.
And I have nothing but admiration for his
constant striving for purity-of-expression upon the blank page.
I’ve had S-E-X whilst on prozac. And the S-E-X was good.
I’ve had S-E-X whilst on psilocybian mushrooms.
And it was good S-E-X.
Really good S-E-X.
Some of the very best.
But only once have I had S-E-X fueled by
the words and the grammar and the sentence structure
of a pock-marked 71-year-old drunk from Andernach in Germany.
Rest in Peace Chinaski.

The Nature Of Sūn Wùkōng Was Irrepressible

I don't like opera.
Never have done. Never will.
I dislike it's pomposity and its smugness
and all that declamatory prima-donna
haute-contre Monteverdi stromentato-ing
for no good reason.
Infact I dislike musical theatre in general
(I learnt too much Stanislavski in school is what it is).
But this? Now this is different. For this is 'Monkey'.
I grew up with the story of Sūn Wùkōng;
the Stone Monkey God made of primal chaos,
who journeyed to India during the Táng dynasty
to collect religious sutras from the blue hand of The Living Buddha.
It was Nippon Television who first adapted it for the small-screen.
And it was David Weir and the BBC who bought the rights
to 39 of the 52 episodes
and then dubbed them into English. Badly. But badly on purpose.
Friday nights in 1980 were all about fish & chips and 'Monkey'.
Friday nights were the undisputed highlight of the week.
Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett
were both born in the Chinese year of the Monkey (1968).
I always wanted to be a Monkey too, but I'm not.
I'm just a dog. And a good-for-nothing Steel Dog at that.
I'm not sure I'll ever be able to fully forgive my parents on that score.

Monkey: Journey To The West

Albarn & Hewlett's BBC 'Monkey' Olympics Trailer

'Monkey Bee': a short film by Jamie Hewlett

The Boys And Girls From Saddle Creek

He wasn't born Bright Eyes. It’s just a moniker.
And before that he was known as Commander Venus.
He comes from the largest city in the State of Nebraska.
From The Gateway To The West.
Birthplace of Malcolm X, Fred Astaire and Marlon Brando.
I’ve here hot-foot from a Trans-Atlantic Boeing 747-700.
Head still ringing with thoughts of The Grevious Angel
and the mesquite
and Room 8 of the Joshua Tree Inn.
I’m in need of a showman. I’m in need of some entertainment.
The sometimes oblique and non-sequitur riddled
lyrics remind me a little of Beck Hansen,
whilst the shoulder length hair
and the all white attire
have me in mind of Lennon
on the pedestrian crossing at Abbey Road
or Jagger in the open air of Hyde Park in '69.
There is real-time back projection
and fresh flowers littering the stage, and yes,
praise the lords of alt-folk, there are two drummers.
And more than that, both drummers are female.
And one of them is wearing an Alice band and pop socks.
Need I really go on?

Phantastic L.A. (Like Totally Fricking AWESOME Dude)

So that was that.
So that was the Los Angeles Film Festival 2007.
Buscemi
Cheadle
Eastwood
Rockwell
Stahl
Optimus Prime and Megatron
Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy
Chuck Heston in "Sensurround"
Mickey Rooney
Michael Moore
Phoebe out of 'Friends'
The fat one from 'Curb Your Enthusiasm'
and Manchester's Danny Boyle to boot.
You are now leaving an Alpha World City.
You are now leaving the town formerly known as
Our Lady The Queen Of The Angels On The River Porciúncula
You came. You saw. You participated.

Thursday Afternoon Ped Xing

out in the backcountry
(with thanks to minerva hoyt)
follow winding ancient trails first blazed by
the cattlemen and the gold miners and the homesteaders
and before that pinto culture and serrano
and before that chemehuevi and cahuillaIn
lost horse valley
skull rock
stirrup tank
monocotyledonous trees as far as eyes can see
twisted little san bernadino’s
masking san andreas fault beyond
along pinto basin road
and drop below 3,000 feet
for change of eco-system
mojave becomes colorado
grasslands give way to drier climes
abundant creosote bush
jumping chollo cactus
spidery jacob's staff
and on on towards imposing hexie mountains
leave no trace
keep wildlife wild
$1000 fine for littering
hang a right onto interstate 10
and allow sonny bono memorial highway
to lead the way home again
out through san gorgonio pass
where sea of wind-turbines loom large
like that phalanx of wooden crosses
which once stood in silent judgement atop hill at golgotha

The Historic Oasis Of Mara

It's breakfast time at the historic Oasis Of Mara.
I'm sat beside the pool
reading Fante
and day-dreaming about the touch of a good woman.
Bill is underneath the awning, fixing himself a cup of Joe.
Bill's been in the High Desert since 1974;
since the U.S military chose to station him here.
His father fought and died in Korea.
Bill just couldn't help himself.
Before he knew it, he'd fallen in love
with the sidewinders and the jackrabbits
and the Californian Fan Palms.
He's been resident in Twentynine Palms these past 22 years.
Time sure flies when you're having fun.
Bill started growing his latest beard back in March.
By December it will be big and thick and white and fluffy.
Just perfect for his annual role as the local Santa Claus.
The kids of the Morongo Basin will lap it up.
And on New Year's Eve, Bill will shave off the beard
and wait till Springtime to start over.

29 Palms Inn

I Say Tomato, You Say Major League Soccer

They call themselves The L.A. Riot Squad,
and tonight, for one night only, I’ve been offered honorary membership.
No Lakers or Dodgers for these sports fans.
Nor for them The Clippers nor The Angels neither.
No, their undying allegiance goes instead
to the team known locally as The Goatbusters.
A team who’s mascot is an extraterrestrial goalkeeping
frog, capable of stopping shots travelling at the speed of light.
There is a large sign erected next to their enclosure at the
far end of the Home Depot Center stadium at CSU Dominguez Hills.
The words on the sign read thus; "Attention:
Los Angeles Galaxy supporters in section 138
will be standing and chanting through out [sic]
the match. Consider yourself warned!"
Judging from tonight’s performance, the arrival of
Brand Beckham and that cultured right foot, can’t come soon enough.

Monday Morning Ped Xing

enable home security alarm
input garage access code
put compact hire-car in drive
and take pacific northwards
try and stay on right hand side of road
pacific becomes neilson becomes ocean
enter people’s republic
past moomat ahiko
and hang a right onto wilshire boulevard
i repeat, try and stay on right hand side of road
up through the cross-streets
past jack-in-the-box
and fatburger
and wahoo's
and jamba juice
and coffee bean
and the wholefoods at 21st street
negotiate slight rise in road at westgate
and continue parallel with historic route 66
under interstate four-oh-five
left onto veteran and sharp left again
show laminate to obtain $6 daily permit
put compact hire-car into park
and leave to bake in sunshine
consume fresh blueberry and almond muffin as you walk to meeting
you have now reached your destination

Eschewing The Red Carpet Treatment

You can't see the H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D sign
from Westwood Village (it's on the blind-side of the hills),
but it's easy to feel it's glitter-streaked fingertips
caressing your flesh and tickling you all about the ribcage.
Westwood Village is Playboy Mansion territory.
Bel-Air to the North. Beverly Hills to the East.
Westwood is where Marilyn Monroe’s bones lay in eternal rest.
The Majestic Crest Theater stands on the rise
like a shimmering mirage of vintage Art Deco delight.
A true landmark single-screen cinema. A beacon of hope.
Constructed in 1941 by Peter and Jane Fonda's mum,
it boasts its very own cyclorama depicting a variety
on Hollywoodland establishments from the Golden Age.
That'll be me, sat right at the back there,
eating salted popcorn like it’s going out of fashion.
That'll be my film, up there on the big-screen,
in glorious flicker-flicker monochromatic 35mm 1:85.
The fluorescent starlights on the theater's ceiling,
I've been reliably informed, are celestially accurate.
It's seven in the evening back in Finchley. And its raining.

On The Longest Of Days

Awoken from slumber
by a cacophonous dawn chorus of
nesting birds in imported palm trees
I sit red-eyed upon the roof terrace and watch
the solstice-day sun slowly rise
above the manicured canals of this Pacific Playland.
Carried aflame by the chariot of Helios
the Solar Impeller
wanders the bright wide Californian sky
alone without clouds
for hour upon hour after hour
before finally dipping behind the carousel
and sinking into the heart of the Santa Monica mountains.
The sand burns beautiful pink for a moment or more.
The bums begin to wake from their afternoon of slumber.
I've had days when I've felt
more out of my depth in a foreign land,
but not too many.
Thankfully, the stroll back to Venice along the boardwalk
helps put things back into some kind of vague perspective.

Transylvania, RM19 1QW

Before moving to his pimped-up vampyre castle
in the Carpathian Mountains of Székelyland,
Bram Stoker's Dracula lived in a house in Purfleet.
In Thurrock.
Just within the eastern boundary of the M25 motorway.
This far into Essex, the Thames is flat and wide and swollen.
It has the feel of the German industrial heartland.
Or maybe Holland. Or Flanders.
This far into Essex, the Thames is flat and wide and swollen.
And it smells. Badly. Of rotten blubber. Of decomposing mammal.
All in all, best to keep the bedroom windows shut.
And hung with garlic. Just in case.

A BAFTA Premiere

The trophy masque that
adorns the wall, is over-sized and
somewhat Apollonian in appearance.
Those tight golden curls and slender nose.
The pursed lips and razor-sharp cheek-bones.
And he's winking at me.
With his one empty eye.
I’ve bought a new suit for the occasion.
I’ve tried to learn my lessons from last time.
In the audience are four generations of Plester;
including my 80-year-old grandmother
and my 1-year-old niece. Both of whom
behave themselves impeccably throughout.
Now you know me. Me and Sundays don't really get on.
We rub each other up the wrong way. It's been documented.
Thankfully, today proves an exception to the rule.

Straight Outta Martha's Vineyard

The last time I saw Willy Mason play,
he was wearing a pair of unflattering spectacles
and was accompanied by just
a younger, skinnier brother on drums.
Tonight, he's breezed into town
with a whole darn tooting band in tow.
Now, I like bands. It's not that. Bands are good.
But somehow, the extra musicians only serve
to dillute Willy's sound.
It's not until we get to the encore
that we get an opportunity to hear
Willy and his acoustic geetar sing out alone.
Instantly, things take on a more transcendant quality.
Instantly you can begin to hear why Willy
has managed to get hisself saddled with the tag of being
the latest in a long long line of "New Bob Dylans".
It's a tag that WIlly wears remarkably well
... though he don't talk too much.

There's This Girl That I Like

So, there's this girl that I like;
piano fingers, chicken legs and half-a-bottom.
You get the picture?
I like her when her hair is dry
and I like her when her hair is wet.
I like her when she's fully clothed
and I like her when she's partially naked.
I like her when she's awake and I like her when she’s sleeping.
I especially like her
when she stands on my back-door stoop,
sheltering from the rain beneath
the hood of my camoflague Parka,
and smoking gold-top Marlboro filters
whilst wearing a pair of my chunkiest socks
and a borrowed t-shirt.
The Mound Of Venus on
her left hand is more fleshy than mine,
but my life-line is a little longer in comparison.
Infact, apparently I have two. Life-lines that is.
I'm guessing one of them must be parallel.

Syrup Of Top Lip

I've asked a few experts on the subject,
and I'm sorry to report
that there appears to be no technical term
for a false moustache.
I've named him Gerald Cookieduster.
He's my face-merkin.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

On reflection, I think NASA is probably
my favourite of the acronyms. What's yours?

I Dream Of The Girl With The Powder Blue Eyes

The blonde-haired girl
with the powder blue eyes
is running barefoot along the length of a frozen East River.
The city is still and silent all around her.
Beneath the Hell Gate Bridge she runs.
Past Ward's Island and Roosevelt Island
and underneath the Queensboro bridge at 59th Steet.
She runs beneath the toll-free Williamsburg Bridge
and beneath the Manhattan Bridge (first opened in 1909).
The girl with the powder blue eyes passes underneath
the steel-wire span of the Brooklyn Bridge
and runs on
towards the Upper New York Bay
and the vast swollen ocean beyond.
Is she smiling? I can't tell. It's difficult to see from here.

The Magic Strumming Rabbi Of Ya-Ya

I Don't Like Sundays

It's at the weekends when I feel most suicidal.
Please don't misunderstand me,
this isn't a cry for help. It's just a simple statement of fact.
It's then that I feel most alone
and redundant
and inconsequential.
Like a haemophiliac in need of a clotting factor.
All spongiform brain tissue and brittle-boned osteogenesis imperfecta.
Like Lou Gehrig (real name Ludwig),
with my ganglia slowly unraveling inside of me.
Like Hank Williams, born with a spina-bifida backbone.
Like some pathetic
mewling wet-nosed
retarded sadsack rookie.
Roll on Monday morning...

A Soho Premiere

When plaudits fly all around you,
the self-deprecating British male of the species
wants nothing more than to simply duck and cover.
Of course, the general consensus
is that I should be feeling very proud of myself.
And yes, there's certainly
a sensation
akin to swelling in my chest,
but it's tempered somewhat you see?
Tinged with a feeling of sadness;
a sadness at the fact that we've come to the end of the road,
a sadness at the absence in the crowd
of several friendly faces
and at the presence there of others
who still possess the power to send
seismic shudders to the white-hot centre of my soul.
Besides which, pride always come before a fall, am I right?
Just ask Lucifer Morningstar.
Just ask Aristotle or Tao Te Ching.
Just ask the Hindu king Ravana.
Not for nothing is Pride often considered the
original of all the Seven Deadly Sins, and indeed
the ultimate source from which the other six arise.
Lust. Gluttony. Greed. Sloth. Wrath. Envy. Duck. And. Cover.


'World Of Wrestling' : TEASERS

Because 4 Dates Are Better Than Nowt I Suppose

On our first date,
she told me she prefered dogs to cats.
I told her how that that was rare. In my experience.
We strolled through the mud in search of wild parrots.
We sheltered from chilblains
beneath the beams of a 15th century tavern,
reknowned for its selection of real ales
its summer BBQ
and the fact that Dick Turpin once hid in its cellar.
Later, as we kissed goodbye at the bus stop,
I could feel a single wonky tooth
gently nudging against me
from beneath the skin of her top lip.
On our second date,
she took me for a drive in her Russian Range Rover.
She wore my coat to keep warm.
We watched the cityscape sparkle
from atop my favourite vantage point.
We sat through the first period of an ice-hockey game,
absorbed by the slapshots,
the Zamboni resurfacer and the musical interludes.
In the pub, waiting for the gravy boat to arrive,
she became concerned about whether people could
smell the dogshit on the sole of her boot from earlier.
Later, as we kissed goodbye on her door-step,
I felt that single wonky tooth again;
nudge-nudging away beneath the skin of her top lip.
On our third date,
she decided to make fresh scones for high tea.
For my benefit, blueberries were used instead of raisins.
As a result of an afternoon spent painting bedroom walls,
her forearms were flecked, here and there,
with Pollockesque stains of brilliant white emulsion.
At one point, she forgot to put the lid on the liquidiser.
As we stood smoking on the roof terrace,
watching the lights of the aeroplanes in their
holding patterns
above our heads,
I became slightly concerned that she wasn't wearing any socks.
Later, as we kissed goodbye at the railway station,
that thing with the wonky white tooth happened again.
On our fourth date,
she wore lipstick for the first time.
She told me she didn't have an appendix. Or any tonsils.
She leant me 5p for the toilet.
We sat next to each other in the theatre.
We sat next to each other on the tube ride home.
It wasn't me, it was her. She said. We never saw each other again.

Barbarossa In Session

The BBC studios in residential
Maida Vale are the stuff of legend.
The Beatles. Jimi Hendrix. The Who. The Small Faces.
All the greats have plugged-in
and tuned-up here at one time or another.
Every cramped corridor echoes with the history of the place.
Every coiled microphone-lead has a tale to tell.
Once home to the pioneering Radiophonic Workshop,
it was here that composer Ron Grainer
painstakingly pieced together a collection of
electronic ripples and white noise wind-bubbles
to create the iconic theme tune for 'Doctor Who'.
It was here, in September 1967, that psychedelic rockers
Tomorrow, recorded the first-ever Peel Session.
Adam & The Ants, Joy Division, The Pixies,
Half Man Half Biscuit and The Fall (some 24 times of asking)
were among the many bands that followed in their wake.
This afternoon sees Barbarossa, with new band in tow,
step-up to the plate and record 5 tracks within the confines
of these hallowed and double-layered walls.
Behind the soundproofed glass, the mixing desk flickers.
Up on the balcony, there is a selection
of complimentary tea and coffee.
After the red light has been extinguished
and the guitars and the harmonium have been packed away,
I hand over my black Sharpie "Twin Tip"
so that Barbarossa can add his scrawl
to the wall-of-fame graffiti
that adorns the door-frame of Studio MV4
and the ceiling and skirting-board of the inner chamber beyond.
It's my small way of saying thankyou.

Things Your Daddy Should've Told You # 1

And Lo, there will come a time in every man's life,
when he will be forced to walk into an electrical store
and purchase a Male Grooming Kit with nasal trimmer.
Can the hairy Lycanthrope earlobes
and salt-and-pepper mons pubis be too far behind?

The Ancient Hill Of Tara

Here in the footsteps of the High Kings walk I.
Here amongst the megaliths
and the long-barrows and the ring-ditches.
On a clear day, from atop
this long, low-lying limestone ridge,
you can see for miles;
viewing as many as 13 of Ireland's 29 counties.
Today is not a clear day.
Today a thick and persistent mist prevails
(common as it is in cold air above warmer waters).
The mist is strangely appropriate.
The mist is more fitting than you might imagine.
For it was in mist that the Tuatha Dé Danaan,
the people of the Triple Goddess,
first came through the high air to this land
- bourne aloft on a giant cloud.
From the Islands in the West they came.
From ancient Falias and Gorias
and Finias and Murias too.
From the Land Of The Forever Young.
And with them they carried The Hallowed Treasures:
The Spear of the Sun
The Sword of the Moon
The Cauldron of Blood
and The Stone of Destiny, or Lia Fáil.
Forbidden and empowering weapons,
salvaged from the lost land of Atlantis.
The monolithic pillar stone
that sits stoically upon this hillcrest
is reputed to be that self-same Stone of Destiny.
It is said that if the rightful King of Ireland
should happen to lay his feet upon its surface
then it should cause the Lia Fáil to sing out in joy.
The stone's song, so it is said, will be heard
from one end of the Emerald Isle to the other.
Despite much protest, work has begun on a new
motorway project in the nearby Tara-Skryne Valley
slicing through the heart of this sacred landscape.
At its closest the intended thrombus of automobiles
will come within 1.2 km of the Ancient Hill of Tara.
For sure it is the work of
the evil lord Weird Slough Feg,
in servitude of his monstrous master
the many-headed maggot-god Crom Crauch.
They seek to turn the earth to sourland.
They seek dominion over the rivers and the forests.
So let the Lia Fáil sing its song.
Let the almighty Tuatha Dé Danaan awaken
from their sleeping place in the Otherworld below,
and come forth armed with
flickering lances of blue flame
and shields fashioned from shining purest white light.
For they have fought and defeated
the fearsome Fir Bholg
and the primordial Fomorians
and they fear not the advance of the asphalt.
The Land must prevail. The Goddess must not be tamed.



Show Your Support

Rapid Celluloid Eye Movement

So what if Buñuel did it all before
and died in Mexico in 1983 from cirrhosis of the liver,
Michel Gondry's 'The Science Of Sleep'
is inventive and incandescent
and full of nuance and whimsy
and beating heart
and multi-lingual characters that I like.
It makes me yearn for a little more
Parallel Synchronized Randomness in my life
and in the lives of my loved ones.
Watching it is a little like being hugged by a favourite sweater
that smells of
freshly-cut grass and hot waffle syrup.
But not too much. Because that would be unpleasant.

A Comedy In Four Acts

When one of the lead characters is off-stage
playing a melancholy tune on a piano keyboard,
you know you must be watching a Chekhov play.
I say that, but I've never actually seen a Chekhov play before.
I know! It's ridiculous. I'm 36 years old,
and I've never seen a Chekhov play before.
I have a degree in theatre studies
and another in playwriting
and yet, somehow, I've never before
seen a play by Anton Chekhov. Never even read one.
I'm not entirely sure quite how that's happened.
The Royal Court's production is one of gentle expanse;
the ensemble performances measured and fully-rounded.
The seagull is a metaphor. Clearly.
Beyond the talk of unrequited love
and the painful artistic struggle for new forms,
I am drawn to the smaller off-the-ball moments;
mesmerised by the way
Katherine Parkinson (Masha) eats fresh cherries.
Moved by the way
Pearce Quigley (Dorn) lingers in a doorway.
Chiwetel Ejiofor (Trigorin) could do nothing but
pack away fishing-tackle for 2 hours and 50 minutes
and I'd happily sit here and watch -
my tongue slowly freeze-drying to the roof of my mouth.
Mackenzie Crook (Konstantin) looks perfectly at home
amongst the long shadows and the over-sized wooden floorboards.
In another world that might've been me up there
with a blood-stained bandage wrapped around my forehead.
In another world the Russians might've made it to the moon first.
In another world Chekhov might not have succumbed to tuberculosis
and been transported back to Moscow in
a refrigerated railway car normally reserved for oysters.
In another world I might be able to get through
a whole day without thinking about that girl as much as I do.
The seagull is a metaphor. Clearly.

Full Of Spinto Beans

The elder statesman in the mosh-pit looks on;
soaking-up the angular
prom-night indie-pop on display.
He approves of the
bobbleheading microphone technique
and the exchanging of guitars.
He approves of the spacecake gurns
and the
calculated
stop-start
staccato mannersims
that work together in tandem.
He wails along with the tunes he knows.
He joins in with the impromptu rendition of 'Happy Birthday'.
A little more action from the kazoo
and the mandolin wouldn't have gone amiss though boys.

The Spinto Band

Who Says Romance Is Dead?

There's just me,
Northern Ireland's most famous
moustache-sporting
Manchester United supporting UNICEF ambassador
and the IFTA award-winning hair stylist
(responsible for Bono Vox's 1984 mullet);
seated at a corner table
in a modern trattoria style eaterie,
located in a former wine merchant's cellar
just across from the current seat of the Irish parliament.
I recommend the apricot and pannetone
bread-and-butter pudding with pistachio biscotti ice-cream.

Happy Singles Awareness Day

3 Good Reasons Why I Still Heart Girls

Because sometimes
they come with freckles and pierced tongues.
Because sometimes they have
caramelised and porridge-thick Northern accents
and know just how to carry off a fringe.
Because sometimes
they possess the kind of eyes capable of detonating planets.

Cultivating A Samson Complex

If Samson had been
a supporting-actor in a BBC police drama
and marooned in Dublin for the weekend,
instead of some biblical hero of the Israelites
famed for wrestling lions
and slaying armies with naught but donkey's jawbones,
maybe he would've consoled himself
over the loss of his seven locks of hair
by ordering a chilli cheese dog and a hot slice of pie
in a themed American diner at the posh end of town.
Maybe they wouldn't have
put his eyes out and placed him in chains?
Maybe I should buy myself a wig?

Dem Blues, Dem Blues, Dem January Blues

Feeling this cold
and empty inside
at this time of year
isn't a new experience.
It's become something of a perennial problem.
Lord please send me a down's syndrome child
or a partner with progressive alzheimers
or some malignant cancer of the colon.
Something worthwhile that I can pour myself into.

This One's For Timothy

It's only the second time
someone's ever dedicated a song to me on stage.
It only serves to hyper-focus my annoyance
with certain sections of the crowd around me,
who are ignoring the constant calls for a bit of hush.
I want to drag these people outside
by their ludicrously back-combed hair,
push them down a sidestreet
and run them through with
a rusty blade.
Preferably an agricultural sickle.
I want to see their hot blood
bubble and steam onto the damp cobblestones
and rise effortlessly into the night sky.
If I can be bothered, I may even
skin them whilst they still draw breath
and wear their worthless flesh like
a scuba-diver might wear a neoprene wetsuit.
Is it really so hard to keep your
fat flapping mouths shut for a half-an-hour?
Show a little respect, eh? Thankyou.

Farewell Brother

I never got to know Russell that well.
Not nearly as well as I would've liked.
But from the moment I first met him,
I knew I had found myself a kindred spirit.
It was one of those separated-at-birth moments.
He made me chuckle did Russell.
He had that rare ability to make me cringe too.
The last time I saw him, he told me about
the afternoon he lost his virginity
to a local girl
in a flat above a hairdresser's salon in Hampshire.
Over dinner, he insisted on
bluetoothing me some low-res S&M pornography.
Russell's son, Charlie, is part
Cherokee Indian - on his mother's side.
My heart soars like an eagle
to that golden place where his father's soul
now mingles with the green corn and the 13 moons;
there to share a sacred smoke
with the Oldest Wind
and the ancient Thunder Beings.

Emmy You're Great

Emmy is wearing her favourire cardigan.
Her fringe hangs just above her sparkling eyelashes.
She sings of tigers
and big-tops
and stomach cramps.
Her words delivered with both bite and beauty.
Like a slingshot from the heart.
Emmy reminds me a little of this girl I used to know.
She too could sing like an angel
and weave her fingers across the strings of a guitar.
Sadly her courage and passion tended to come and go;
ebbing and flowing with the tide.
Always dependent on the pull of the milky moon.

Emmy The Great

My Celebrity Lookalikes

Tim Roth: 22%
Edward Norton: 10%
the drummer from Supergrass: 10%
The Monkees' Mike Nesmith (the one with the bobblehat): 55%
Rodney Trotter: at least 15%
(when I wear my glasses) Jarvis Cocker: 31%
Dustin Hoffman: 15% (mainly for the nose).
Big Bird from 'Sesame Street': 75% (again, the nose)
A "young" Pete Townsend: 99%
For if it's true that everyone look like Pete Townsend
in the back of a spoon,
then I must be the back of that universal spoon.

Find The Celebrity In You

Fit As A Broken Fiddle

I just can't seem to shift this cough.
It's been almost 2 whole weeks now.
It started off as one of those
tickles at the back of the throat,
developed into full blown pharyngitis
with accompanying rhinorrhea,
before moving up into the cerebellum for a day
and finally deciding to remove its viral shoes
and set-up home in my thoracic cavity.
The doctor's surgery on Sloane Square feels frozen in time.
The cramped rooms may aswell be illuminated by gas lamps.
Pinned and mounted to the walls
like framed butterflies
are many many
signed photographs of various stars of stage and screen.
And Jimmy Nail.
I perch on a padded high-backed green leather armchair,
whilst the physician takes my pulse
looks briefly at my tongue
and asks me how much I weigh.
He sends me on my way with a clean bill of health.
No materia medica is prescribed.
The German's have a word for men of his ilk.
And that word is quacksalber.

Glückliches Neues Jahr

My best friend first went missing in February, 2001.
Chronic stress, brought on
by the pressures of work and family life,
caused his mind to bend
like hot toffee treacle
and almost break itself in two.
He suffered some form of dissociative amnesia.
A fugue state if you will.
When he "awoke" several days later,
he had no clear memory of the previous 72 hours.
He returned to his wife and children in Germany,
spent a couple of weeks in bed, and sought medical help.
An MRT scan revealed no tumours or organic anomalies.
He went missing again towards the tail-end of 2004.
This time the brief reactive psychosis was not as pronounced.
It felt, to me at least, as more of a cry for help.
He wondered if he might be mad. He was told he wasn't mad.
He described the experience as; "like playing monopoly".
He was still losing the game, but learning from each defeat.
When he vanished again in early 2005, I feared the worst.
This time however, the mental illness was only partly to blame.
This time there was another woman involved.
And yes, this complicated matters somewhat.
He left his wife and children and moved South to Munich.
We didn't speak for many months.
He couldn't face the people he felt he had let down.
I came to accept the fact
that there was a distinct possibility
I might never see my best friend again.
All I ever craved from him was a simple apology.
When that finally came, the floodgates quickly re-opened.
So much so, that I've travelled here to Munich
to celebrate the dawning of the brand new year.
My best friend has offered me a bed for a few of nights on his new leather sofa.
We've been up to the Alps and marvelled at the panorama.
I haven't seen him this happy in years.
Awaiting him, on this the first morning of the year 2007AD,
is a kitchen sink full of Ouzo-fuelled cold vomitus
and the remnants of last night's dirty washing-up.
Thankfully, not a drop of the sick is mine.
I was on the cola and orange Spezi's all night.
Officially the most sober man in The Free State of Bavaria.

A Nimrod By Any Other Name

The sun has yet to rise at Stansted Airport.
They confiscate my bottle of Australian root beer
and make me remove my Vans
and my Klepper ski-jacket
and my Zimstern Pedalo beanie
and my iPod
and my loose change.
The T.V. screens in the departure lounge
beam the scrolling headlines about the hanging
of Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikrit.
President George Walker Bush
has called the lynching a "milestone",
because a) someone told him to do so
and b) because he's not the one
who has to cart the bodybags on and off the planes.

That's The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz

Oscar is two-and-three-quarters.
His cousin, Mikey, is about a year-or-so older.
They sit, together on the sofa,
utterly transfixed by a film made almost 70 years ago.
A film which transfixed their parents
and their grandparents
and their great-grandparents before them.
MGM's 'The Wizard Of Oz' is, quite simply put,
the greatest motion picture ever made. Bar none.
And this from a man who hates musicals. With a passion.
That switch from monochrome
to technicolour
will never ever be surpassed.
I remember being the only kid at school
who wanted to be The Tin Man.
He was made of metal, carried a fireman's axe
and could blow hot steam from the top of his head.
You didn't get that with either The Scarecrow or The Lion.
Scarecrows I'd seen in fields.
Lions I'd seen in zoos and on nature programmes.
But a Tin Man? I'd never encountered a a Tin Man before.
Not in Banbury.
He was the one for me.
Afterall, who needs brains or courage when you can have a heart?
Buddy Ebsen, the actor originally cast as The Tin Man
had a near-fatal reaction to the aluminum dust used in the make-up.
He had to be replaced by the actor Jack Haley,
and the make-up had to be switched to an aluminium paste.
Ironically, Jack Haley ended-up dying of a heart attack.
That happened in 1979.
In Los Angeles, California.
He was 80 years old.
Which is considerably older than young Oscar. Or his cousin Mikey.
Despite persistent rumours to the contrary,
no stagehands
or munchkins were harmed during the course of filming.

For Life... Not Just For Christmas

i know it sounds foolish
and is woefully after-the-fact,
but if I'd said
you could have a cat for x-mas
would you still have packed your things and left?

Yes, There Used To Be An Arts College, Right Here

Eras are there to be ended I suppose,
and Dartington College Of Arts
has sat there atop a quiet South Devon hillside since 1961.
It's a special place. A unique learning centre.
Somewhere which is very very close to my heart.
I probably wouldn't be doing
what i'm doing today
if not for the four academic years
I feel privileged to have spent there between 1989 and 1994.
Those four years on that hillside changed my life.
And that's no exaggeration.
They're talking about closing the college down
and relocating things to Falmouth in Cornwall
- which is famous for its harbour
and once went by the name of Pennycomequick.
Now, I've nothing against Falmouth.
Not personally anyway. I've never been.
But talk of relocating the college away from
the Dartington Hall estate and its medieval Great Hall
seems to me to miss the point entirely;
for the course and its location have always
enjoyed something of a symbiotic relationship.
And one without the other simply doesn't add up.
Dartington isn't some kind of brand.
It's not some kind of secret soda-pop recipe.
Or the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Or, heaven forbid, the next Milton Keynes Dons.
But what do I know about it anyway?
Bretton Hall recently fell by the wayside,
so why should Dartington be any different?
The world will keep turning.
The mating rituals of the great Orca whale will be unaffected.
I mean, do the students of today even need a campus I wonder?
Surely it can all be done over the internet these days anyway?
I just hope they don't end-up turning it into another Wetherspons.

Save Dartington Website

1969 Was A Good Year For Adderbury

1969 was a good year for the village of Adderbury.
It was the year it was voted "Best-Kept Village In Oxfordshire".
I know this because there's a commemorative plaque
nailed to the wall of the Village Institute
which stands proud testament to the fact.
Tonight, in this quiet Oxfordshire village
(noted for its 15th-century parish church
and distinctive honey-coloured Horton stone cottages),
a grey-haired man stands beneath a painting
of a cornfield at harvest time.
He plays washboard and demi-jar
and sings a song about the outlaw Jesse Woodson James.
That man is my father.
It's my turn to be proud of him for a change.
In the village where he helped me make my first mud pie.
In the village where he gave me my first haircut.
In the village where he read me my first comic-book.
In the village where he showed me how to kick my first football.
In the village where he fed me my first
soft-boiled egg.
In the village voted Oxfordshire's "Best-Kept" back in 1969.

Not Really Much Of A Leg Man

I find myself disagreeing
with Bukowski on this one...
See, I've never really been much of a leg man.
I prefer a girl in plimsoles
to a girl in high heels.
Generally speaking.
I mean, don't get me wrong,
I like legs for sure.
Legs are nice. Legs can be fantastic.
Legs feel good when entangled
round the small of the back.
But they're not what turns my head.
I prefer a tight fringe to long flowing locks.
I prefer a pair of spectacles to contact lenses.
And me? I've never been a big fan of make-up.
Still, that said, there's always
someone out there with the
ability to come waltzing along
and blow the whole thing
clean out of the water.
Like a torpedo. Or a depth-charge.
Preferably when you're least expecting it.

Return Of The Prodigal Jarvis

The scarecrow hair
and the bug-eyed astigmatism.
The epileptic twitches.
and the razor-sharp corduroy elbows.
The tongue in-the-cheek
and what must
surely be the longest index finger in popdom.
All are very much present. All are very much correct.

'Don't Let Him Waste Your Time' promo video

Stupid Sentimental Me

Where once Old London Town
seemed like some aloof and untouchable stranger,
now she appears
almost filled to the bursting
with ghosts and appartitions.
I have a tendency to hang onto things, it's true.
Memories have a habit of rattling around
endlessly in this hollow heart of mine.
I reminisce with every exhale.
Nostalgia seeps from my every pore.
On some days,
just the most simple of
bus journeys along the Finchley Road
can bring to mind the soothing lips
of at least 3 or 4 women that I've loved and lost.
I wouldn't have it any other way.

Beautiful Boy

Sean Taro Ono Lennon has never sung in a church before.
Though you try hard,
so very very hard to resist,
you can't help but make a remark
about "how much he sounds like his dad".
Sean was only 5 when Mark David Chapman
dropped into a combat stance on 72nd Street
and fired 4 hollow-pointed bullets
from a Charter Arms revolver
before blaming it all on J. D. Salinger.
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the day
at the Indica gallery
when his parents first met;
when John climbed that stepladder
and picked up that magnifying glass
and spied that single magical word written on the ceiling.
His mum, Sean tells us, is in the audience tonight.
Apparently, the poet Wiliam Blake
was baptized in the font over in the corner.

The Greatest Playwright Of Her Generation

It may surprise you to know
that this isn't the first time
I've sat through a German-language
production of an English stageplay.
The last one hadn't been written
by a dead friend of mine however,
so tonight certainly qualifies as a new experience.
When I first met Sarah, she was wearing shades.
The sun was shining.
We were on the other side of the globe.
England had failed to qualify for The World Cup.
The actress playing Cate (Katharina Schüttler),
with her hoodie and her bare feet and her st.. st.. stammer
reminds me of Sarah just a little.
It's the nose mainly
but also the hair
and the way she holds the gun.
"Lesbo" read the surtitles. "Gash"... "Spaz"... "Wog"...
The stage spins.
Rubble falls from the roof.
Giant fluorescant striplights hum.
Even now, some 12 years later,
that line about Man Utd beating Liverpool still grates.
She'd've been happy about that.

zerbombt

When Suddenly Spring Feels A Long Ways Off

And it's these kinds of mornings
fresh with the frost of onrushing winter
when I most miss
the simple pleasures of being able
to roll over
and find a nice pair of warm buttocks
to place my hands upon.

The Old Cancer Sticks

Because the Department Of Health
want you to quit with your smoking nonsense,
I had to spend my morning
in Aylesbury
looking like this.
Admittedly, there are worse things I could be doing with my time.


"Get Unhooked"

Drinking Flat Root Beer For Breakfast

Drinking flat root beer for breakfast
tastes, to my tongue at least,
like purest decadence in liquid form.
If you can imagine such a thing?
Surely something this divine
must have its darker consequences.
And indeed, a friend of mine
recently laid claim that it contains
a secret carcinogenic ingredient.
Notoriously difficult to obtain
on this side of the wide Atlantic gap,
they drink the stuff by the bucketload in
Park City Utah and in San Luis Obispo
and along the boardwalk at Coney Island.
Of course, there are those who would say that
drinking flat root beer for breakfast
tastes more like out-of-date
cough medicine mixed with cyanide.
It's clearly something which divides opinion.
One's things for certain though,
drinking flat root beer for breakfast
is something which should never be done alone.

The American Soda Company

In Need Of Some Of Dr. Tibbles Famous Vi-Cocoa

Not so much acting for a living,
as spending 6 hours in the Tirranean Sea
waving a bit of wood in the air
and choking on salt water.