The most delicious fruit in world.

The most delicious fruit in the world is small, has tough green skin and a hard stone at its heart. But its flesh is soft and pure, sweet with the tang of forgotten dreams.

Long ago great lumbering lizards with long necks used to seek them out, gracefully plucking the fruit from the sky high branches of giant trees, their heads piercing the gloom of the forest below into the glittering sun, shimmering life all over the canopy.

As the flesh crushed and leaked across their teeth what a treat they got.

A sweet smooth seduction broken by a frown, a dry trying bitter blizzard that mixes then fixes to a soft salty jingle that lingers and lingers just too long to bear before breaking down to the bare bones of soar.

Every major movement cascades fragrances, bright with colour, sublime, so entangled to distract and lose any perspective of the general theme that just keeps sculpting its high and lows like the mountainous sun-drenched, rain soaked landscape it came from.

Without warning it starts over, from a different place, a different time, somehow understanding that everything has changed, never to be the same again. A whole new experience, a better experience, is to about to begin - about to become the future’s past… but not yet.

But it does...

From one great tree a giant lumbering lizard could spend a whole day eating, standing tall to reach the fresh young buds or slumbering low to the muskier fallen, matured on a bed of leaves.

When one tree had given its all they lazily crashed a path through other trees to find another, leaving in their trail of destruction big piles of hard stone embedded dung - seeded to suddenly make sense of the tree’s gastronomic generosity.

The trees did well out of their greedy companions and their kind spread far, stretching from side to side across the continent wide forests that covered the world at the time.

They became the most populous of them all for more years than it is possible to count.

But time will never stop until it has eaten all that it has created and one by one the giant lizards slowly vanished from the world.

Little rat like creatures, nothing more than parasites, that used scurry around the feet of the great lizards steeling their eggs for sustenance, inherited the world.

Maybe some of the rats had a genetic abnormality or maybe the trees did, maybe deep in the ancient trees’ branchy wisdom they didn’t want the rats or maybe what they would become to ever eat their fruit… or maybe fate was just replaying the way it was always going to be.

Whatever the reason the fruit was poisonous to the rats.

Any young rat, curious of the fruit, smelling some poor sod dead rat that had taken a brave nibble was generally discouraged from even trying.

Over the years that followed the rats did well, adapting and changing to fill their empty new world. Eventually their descendants would conquer it, making it every corner submit to their will and in the process destroy much of its beauty.

But in a couple of remote corners a few of the trees carried on, hidden from all, living for thousands of years, relying on luck rather than taste to propagate. The fruit glistering on the tips of their branches before falling to the ground to be left uneaten.

No living creature even capable of knowing how incredible they tasted.

Their future looks bleak. Luck generally runs out and one day only one still stand at its last final fruit will fall.

But that is not for a while and who knows what kind of creature will pick it up.

"any brave new world"

tick tock and the clock chimes your time for fifteen minutes of fame...

"Hi, You are not wearing a tie?!"

"Hi, err no hmm I don't really wear ties."

"Ok, did you not get the email?!"

"Yeah I did but hmm... I don't actually have a tie - well apart from one for weddings and I just was thinking..."

"Not a problem, we should be able to get one - maybe off one of those security guards."

"I suppose we could but... no one in the city actually wears ties anymore"

"Heh - don't worry we'll find you one - it would look good if you looked like you worked in the City"

"But I do - this is what I wear..."

"Well yeah... you look a bit casual.. So where do you actually work?"

"Canary wharf."

"Wow really - that is where I am based - did you see the may day protest."

"Well no not really.. it wasn't very big was it? - they started checking our ID cards slightly more obviously but..."

"It was great they all dressed up in suits and ties so they wouldn't get noticed. Then at the last minute they took them off and started dancing around to music they had smuggled in"

"Smuggled in?"

"Strangely all the security guards and police seemed to know exactly who they were".

"Yeah probably because they were wearing ties and no one..."

"I went down to take photos - great shots - I saw someone I thought I knew"

"Really?"

"Yeah I was looking at her, dancing around and singing and I was convinced I knew her. After they had taken off their suits they started singing nine to five. You know - by Dolly Parton"

"Nine to Five?"

"To make a point about the city and global capitalism"

"Nine to Five?!!"

"Yeah exactly - so there I was taking shots of her and I was convinced I knew her."

"Right"

"I go to a lot of festivals - you know music festivals. Like Glastonbury..."

"Yeah I have been a ..."

"So that was what I was thinking - I must know her from that - one of the many faces you see - twirling around. Then she came over and said hello... "

"Why?"

"It turned out I went to primary school with her- 'so you are a full time anarchist now?' I said"

"Doesn't mean she is an anarchist simply because..."

"Weird though - don't you think?"

"Yeah"

...

I broke the silence

"So are you a full time member of the paparazzi?"

"No I work for the Guardian. We don't distort reality with pictures."

"Like making someone wear a tie when then never do?"

"That's more playing with imagery - actually my last job was a bit paparazzi well actually anti-paparazzi! We paparazzied the paparazzi"

"Wow!"

"Yeah - all the Sun's editor team go away for the long weekend in an awful caravan park in skegness with some lucky winners of a sun competition - it is more or focus group to meet their readers ."

"woo"

"Yeah when I got the assignment I said - "You've got to be joking - I became a photo journalist to find out about the world - to tell people about it - to change it - not to hide behind a portaloo waiting for Rebecca Wade to come out holding a toilet roll."

"Did you get one then - I mean a picture of Rebecca Wade having a poo?"

"Yeah - god it was disgusting"

"And is the Guardian going to print it?"

"No the legal team had problems with it"

"Ahh yes - I can see that"

"Oh look there are your brothers - now lets get you that tie."

Bin bags of the mind.

At quarter to five, a bin bag flew past by the window.

It was plastic and black and so far out the reach of the corner of my eye I wasn’t really sure I had seen at all.

It looked like a black bin bag – a black sheet of plastic perfection flying like a bat out of hell across the small frame of real light silhouetting the small section of Manhattan skyline I could see from my desk.

It flew across the tiny square section of the far away wall that differentiated all I was doing from what I normally do in London.

I was distracted.

I went back to my screen, the LCD lit numbers running over my tired face.

Then I saw it again.

But this time different, triangular and heading down fast at such a velocity it was hard to believe. I didn’t get a close look – I had missed it again.

I got up off my desk and walked to the window across an office of New York telephone calls – the fuck yous, the grovelling, the helpful, the man explaining to his wife he wouldn’t be home again tonight, the woman telling her date she would be late. I walked past the coffee machine and got to the window just as the sun set across Mid Town, the buildings scrapping the sky, screaming at the pink light reflecting off each other’s ambitious glory.

But there was nothing.

As I stared up along a high view down an endless Avenue - I considered theories.

The bat or spider like nature of my gotham city aberration had not gone unnoticed by the plagiarizing parts of my psyche.

The only valid conclusion was garbage.

Floating on the air trying to find a way out – out of the city to find a nice beach to retire on.

The music box

When Humperdink Tumble first showed his music box to the public at the new world product fair in the sweetly cool spring of 2054, it was met with whoops of derisive mirth and ridiculing glee. The very idea was found ludicrous if not impossible boardering on the artistically offensive.

That was until he turned it on.

“I don’t know…. exactly…. how it works!”

He said, the words tumbling out his mouth with some fight but not enough to find their way into the minds of the stunned audience. The words broke their moorings and fell free from meaning and were lost in a sea of sound.

His eyes lolled down in sympathy of his brain's fine failure to verbalise structure on a breakdown under scrutiny. His thoughts just incidental to events – not the calculated manifestations of a well formed personality.

“But… err… it does work!”

He finally muttered finding some triumph where he felt there was none, the flashing cameras distilling his face into black and white, dark and light as the crowd awoke and started taking photographic pictures, as if you could, of such a thing.

News of the box spread across the world like a flash, lightening up information super highways with digital fire.

Soon Humperdink’s face was seen on screens around the globe being asked endless questions by keen clean shaven anchor-men with big microphones: “How does it work?” “What’s the secret?” “What gave you the idea?” “What effect will it have on everything?” “What does it mean?” “How does it feel, to be you, being asked all these questions?”

Humperdink Tumble lost count of the number times he said “Hmm… I’m not really sure...” looking down at the ground bashfully – “I was.... trying to make... a rabbit hutch.” his eyes swelling up with tears.

He tried to tell the anecdote of its conception as well as he could but it often fell on dead expressions.

It had meant it to be a classical rabbit hutch but with some measurement confusion had ended up something more suited to sleep a small polar bear. In a moment of madness he had filled it with wool and wire and the withered remains of woodlice over fed on wild rice.

Then it started to hum.

Humperdink, having never made a rabbit hutch before thought nothing of it. His suspicions only aroused when his neighbours started to knock on the door to ask what the exquisite noise coming from his back garden was.

The media frenzy following the world fair finally abated to a circus but even that slowly faded and packed up camp to find fresher blood.

Military men came to see if they could turn it into a thing to kill. Money men came to try and make a deal.

But the box just sung sweet songs to their souls, caressing nearly forgotten parts of their hearts back to life, leaving them saying goodbye, with a tear in their eye and a new point of view and generally spent far more time with their loved ones from then on.

The best technicians and engineers came to figure out, with detailed examinations, how it worked but all they found was there was no way it could have, would have or even should have ever been.

Humperdink made another.

It just made loud farting noises, varying in pitch and length to an extra-ordinary degree, which in some ways was even more remarkable.

But after the music box the reviews were dismissive.

Humperdink with little else to do toured his box around the various music festivals of the land, turning it on, to play the genre that was most prevalent – be it punk rock or jazz or simple folk – streaming out beautiful, perfect and unique music to the relative crowd listening. It always managed to pull a reasonable crowd.

Then one day it stopped.

It never made a sound again and no one was the wiser.

Humperdink’s 3rd attempt at making a rabbit hutch turned out like a well… a rabbit hutch.

He adopted a brown haired rabbit called Oscar who just loved it and lived in it very happily.

Prologue

The storm had been raging for weeks rampaging like a screaming drunk beast ripping up thoughts with both fists from their secured rational threads and throwing them into paces they shouldn't rightly be. What a mess. I don't know where to start. Back to the core....

All clear now - the sun is shining through a few small grey clouds that still hover: the lingering gate crashers deciding between a way home or the can of warm ash infused beer and another petty bout of vandalism. The serious leather jacketed weather just visible departing over the horizon, bitch in toe content with their carnage.

By the shore a fisherman weeps over the body of his dead wife not noticing the few fragments of his boat and house that lie around him or me staring scared and scarred. Slow waves caressing occasionally shifting debris back and forth across the shore but never going anywhere.

So where now? I am still here. I think about helping the fisherman - he turns and we chance each others eye and hold it for a second. We both know there is nothing I can do.

So I turn my back and start walking away. Away from here. Anywhere but here. Anyone but her.

Folkicious

So I go to the Green Man festival with Helga and Copacub and gang.

One night after a day’s eclectic set of entertainment from an electric one-man banjo band to black and white slap-stick celluloid played to pianoed Mozart to painfully exquisite songs of forgotten wars, past down from soul to soul over the reaches of time; we go back our camp and Helga picks up her guitar and starts to sing.

After a while, when I’d dosed into a satisfied slumber listening to her melodious strumming, a face emerged from the gloom, lit up from underneath by the candles we were sat around.

“What time are you thinking of playing to?” it said.

“I am not planning to stop at all!” Helga replied, her ember eyes still burning red with rage and passion of the evening and the song she had been singing just moments before.

“Can you just keep it down?”

“Yeah… we will keep it down!” The crowd said hoping to douse the situation.

“No! I want her to say it – her playing the music - her singing!!” the face said getting uglier by the word.

“No! I will not!” Helga muttered under her breath.

“Say it – your music is shit and I don’t want to hear it anymore!”

Suddenly the touch-paper was lit.

“Who do you think, the fuck, you are, telling me you don’t like my music? I don’t like your shit haircut; I don’t like your ugly face. I think they are offensive. Why don’t you shut them up!”

“Yeah – man – this is a folk festival – what are you doing, complaining about acoustic music being played around a camp in a traditional folk style, re-introducing codes of intercourse and our own personal emotional responsive adjustments to life in some way?” the crowd said in unison.

As the demon saw her attempted tyranny fade she disappeared into the night.

It is always good to have Helga around.

Nana Jizel

I met them, Dr Syntax and Dr Johnson, when I was there last week.

My travailing companion had decided to take a fly around, swooping and swirling with the birds, twirling over the white peaked waves, nearly losing control as she took the full face of a blustery gust around the edge of a lighthouse.

As I watched her tumble away slightly out of control, crying with delight as the rain and sea spray streamed down her face, I felt slightly alone and left out having never learnt to fly myself.

I wanted to find the Nana Jizel.

Nana Jizel is a sagely purple dragon who lives near by.

She has reached a certain age and black spines are starting to break through her wrinkled purple skin, sore and flapping against the painful intrusions or rather their antonyms.

Dragons start out green, big and boisterous, flaming terrified villagers or flying low over herds of cows, cooking them with big bursts of fire. As they grow older they shrink and turn red becoming strong and powerful, generally acquiring unimaginable wealth of gold and jewels they mostly just sleep on. When the glitter fades they become wise and purple, magically knowledgeable of their inner power as their outer frame and fame reduces further. Eventually they blacken into concentrated intelligence and wisdom getting smaller and smaller until they finally disappear in a sublime puff of divine smoke.

Nana Jizel is still young enough to get annoyed and grumpy with her two wizard neighbours but only intervenes when their arguments get completely out of control. This is rare because Dr Johnson and Dr Syntax normally have a completely different perception of what they are actually talking about.

For example Dr Syntax might say in passing:

“Split infinitives are frequently poor style, but they are not strictly bad grammar. To avoid the split infinitive could result either in weakness or over-formality: either might ruin rhythmic force and rhetorical pattern.”

Dr Johnson would retort angrily:

“You can't use unicylcing fish to badly lubricate priest's collars because his name was Tim and making book knees without of umbrella tears or Mariah Carey, you fool!”

To which Dr Syntax would say:

“Your reply is irrelevant and not a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition. It contains the fallacy of Non Causa Pro Causa: you have identified a cause of an event, but not actually shown it to be the cause. The non sequitur is only worthy of note but not comment.”

Dr Johnson would then start choking, gagging as if something was stuck in his throat until an orange popped out of his mouth and rolled along the floor to Dr Syntax’s feet. A door would then creakily open in the orange’s side and out would jump a tiny monkey carrying an equally tiny jack. The monkey would then put the orange on the jack and start jacking it up, pausing occasionally to pant for comic and dramatic effect. When it reached Dr Syntax face a hoping mad Hara Kristina would rise up on a platform through its top, shouting incoherent obscenities – something about stealing a trampoline and frantically waving his tambourine.

At which point Dr Syntax would storm off in a huff, sweeping his cape around him brooding deconstructivism.

Nina Jizel would then close her watchful minds eye and go back to sleep.

She knows they never agree or disagree but they are both very powerful wizards so she wants to be careful.

She was a red dragon back the days of Merlyn and doesn’t want those mistakes to be made again.

Land's End

If you start walking west and don’t stop, leaving behind the dealings of man, the tarmaced roads and clipped hedge fences of stripped dreams,

If you keep going and reach the coast, taking the windy path by the turquoise sea, both seductive and dangerous, looking down on waves exploding against ragged rocks and soft sands, sometimes traveling high along towering cliffs topped with spiky heather and sharp brambles flowering a shower of colour all around you, other times low through thick rich green over-hung paths escorted by brown and white butterflies to fields of ferns draped down the steep sides of beachy coves,

When your weary feet throb for rest, carrying on past the frowning crowds of cliff edge cows slowly masticating on their non-existent doom,

Down fragrant clean steamed valleys gurgling under tiny moss ridden stone bridges by white witches’ cottages, gardens filled with medicinal herbs, giant rhubarb and tiger dragonflies.

Pausing briefly to hear a blue capped curly haired weather worn fisherman’s tales of a widow’s woe at the hands of a cruel sea and the shocking cost of house prices these days as his white teeth and blue eyes sparkle in the sun.

Past the castles of long dead kings and the ghostly remains of tin mines marking deep holes.

Sometimes walking like giants, striding over trees like weeds; sometimes like mice, scrambling over peddles like boulders,

Resting occasionally on the sleeping heads of stone trolls embedded in the soil, maybe taking a lock of their mossy hair for luck,

Through the wispy mist seeping out the black broken windowed eyes of abandoned farms covered with stinging nettles and doc leaves,

Eventually you will run out of land.

A head, where, blue nothing stretches away forever across endless waves, whales and basking sharks eating fish spunk and stinking sea weed for thousands of miles until a new world.

There, just beyond souvenirs shops, the laughing seagulls screaming their cream tea crumpet scavenging delight and signs that say “Danger CLIFF”, right on the edge, at the very end, two wizards live.

Who, what with the enlightenment and all, are called Dr Syntax and Dr Johnson.

Dr Syntax makes perfectly formed sentences, in granite, then lets the elements erode them until they tumble away crumbling into the sea.

He is rather highbrow and has eye brows floating a few inches above his particular head.

Dr Johnson has a big top hat that falls over his eyes, in it a cuckoo lays eggs on his head made of cheese that tick and tock and could explode at any moment into parachuting ponchoed parrots but never tell the time.

Dr Syntax finds Dr Johnson’s work trivial and neither laudable nor commendable for any let alone an exemplary modern Wizard.

Dr Johnson finds bananas in his pajamas… plotting… exponential cardboard cutout fanaticism.

They never agree.

Gamma Cephei

In the constellation of Cepheus, in a rather empty part of the sky near the North Pole, there is a binary star system called Gamma Cephei.

Where, three billion years or so ago two young suns were tricked by gravity into a slow dance, to constantly fall towards each other but never get any closer.

They continue, trapped in their endless waltz, to this day.

You can see them, if you try, with your naked eye, in the night sky, so far away and distorted by atmospheric twinkling, they appear as one.

They are 21 million miles apart.

In between them a giant planet orbits:

Twice the size of Jupiter, its vivid rings of ice and rock slowly spin around torrid atmospheric storms of hydrogen, helium and methane below, casting multicolored shadows over her circling moons.

The biggest of these, slightly smaller than the Earth, orbital path through the giant planet’s gravity well causes huge tectonic creaks and groans as it is stretched and squeezed this way and that by gravitational tides.

Volcanoes and sulfuric vents spring up overnight, erupting through the ground, gushing up plumes of hot gas into clouds in a wet and humid air.

By these vents small sulphur eating bacteria live, deriving sustenance from the seismic energy cooked up underground. Over millions of years some evolved into small worms and others to weird plants that adapted to their volatile environment with leafs that fill up with air like balloons and so are blown away to safer climes by preemptive gaseous bursts of near by tectonic activity.

Some of these rudimentary plants became, traveling along the strange path between death and life, large trees, interlinked into groups, grasping each other for safety.

It is quite the sight to see a whole forest up root, majestically take off and gently float away across the celestial rings set on the jets of fire circling the horizon.

On these trees a species of worm evolved: eight legs, for gripping branches and under-hung munching of the gaseous leaves and over millions of years; big cheek pouches that filled up with the light tree leaf gas and could, if they felt the need, be used to float down to any passing forests below, cheeks puffed out, an alarmed look on their faces and their wiggly bodies dangling underneath.

The dimmest of these worms dropped to fiery ends down the volcano vents but the wiliest judgers of wind and relative velocity made the precarious drops to other flying forests and spread their knowledge and physical faculties. Over the generations the worms became a canny, wild eyed, puffy cheeked bunch.

Some started rearing up on six legs and the front two limbs developed into arms with 3 fingers and a thumb on each.

They found commutation useful and developed language that wasn’t based on types of sounds but on tones which carried better from floating forest to floating forest.

There wasn’t day and night as we understand them but eight different periods depending on which combination of the three bright heavenly bodies was in the sky. Each period was represented by the C major scale. Complete light and starry night the same note - just shifted an octave.

Eight fingers and thumbs led to a base eight numbering system each digit represented by D# minor.

More complicated words and sentences were made up of note combinations and chords.

The language was complicated further by the phase of the giant planet above changing the mode used.

When a lot of them chatted together it sounded not completely dissimilar to the most exquisite music.

Last Tuesday one of these worms misjudged his drop and landed on the ground.

As he scrambled up a cragged valley to find a way back to his life in the sky the two suns were eclipsed by the planet above, setting on its giant thin crescent, thirty times the size of Earth’s moon.

Darkness fell and the distant stars started to prick the velvet sky, he looked up and wondered if there was anything out there.

A duck's story

In a small northern town nestling between green hills, in a time when bread was bread, delivered by boys on bikes, pushed up steep cobbled streets to old frowning women with saggy tights and rolling pins,

where clogged and cloth capped men’s hard day’s graft down pit, black faces ingrained with coal soot, dug deep from the heart of the earth with iron picks, to burn in endless fires, billowing smoke into the air, distorted sunsets into cascades of purples, pinks and orange,

who didn’t talk nonsense and relaxed by putting ferrets down trousers and fisty cuffs outside shutting pubs as the moon rose, shining peaceful yellow light over the occasional spurt of blood or a broken tooth’s tumbling trajectory through the air in an arch to the gutter below,

near the mill, up the alley by the church, along a red brick faced Victorian terrace, past the working man’s club and right by the brass band playing in the park was a pond.

In the pond was a duck.

Who, when his fellow ducks flew into whirl-winds of anger and love or wildly swung from greed to compassion, stayed in a perpetual state of mild bemusement.

Some said his temperamental range was limited – others that it was unique – yet more that he suffered from a peculiar aliment that rarely afflicts the emotionally volatile duck-kind and was waddling a tight wire along the fine line between tedium and tension.

Maybe they all had a point.

When the delivery boys grew weary with the hills and tossed their yeasty loads into the blue water ways the other ducks hunger lust took over and a crazed soggy bread frenzy generally ensued – the desire for food and a full stomach lightening up their eyes and minds like volcanoes,

this duck just chuckled and commented on the silliness of the situation, nibbling on any spare morsel passing by.

When the female ducks’ dull and dowdily exteriors became to the male fraternity a sweet and erotic taste of paternity,

when the male’s bright and colourful plumage mirrored their reckless and brave antics stirring up deep within the hearts of the female ducks a fiery passion so bright that even the furnaces hell were dimmed in comparison,

our hero just looked on with a befuddled frown, maybe making a dry quip.

When the rumour that mad pike Frazer had taken old Bill Duckerty’s leg clean off as he paddled past a canal boat filled with slag and rubble, pulled by a weary shire-horse, metal clod hoofs clip–clopping along the towpath, surfaced and spread like wild fire around the small duck community,

our duck didn’t spend the next few days nervously peering down into the watery depths watching for mad pike Frazer’s glimmering eye as he started his lunge - or let paranoia force mass flights of fear from the slightest noise.

Oh no - for fate wasn’t a fickle and cruel mistress to him – she was a pleasant and amiable companion.

Even at the end.

One day a ferret who had seen one too many miners’ cocks went insane and made a break from his trouseriery prison. Freedom often falls badly on the ill informed especially the spatially deprived and his blissful flee across the park ended suddenly when he saw our protagonist’s neck.

It reminded him of the horror of his snaky tormentors since a young age.

He leaped and sunk his teeth in as deep as he could.

As our duck’s life ebbed away, as he finally realised the reality of endless oblivion, the eternity of nothing that would be over in the blink of an eye he did not experience the unmitigated terror normally associated with such things.

He just raised an eyebrow put on a wry smile and thought…

“Well. This is a turn up for the books!”

What a duck!

Hmm

If you fly away, far beyond the rolling hills and shady dales, past the misty mountains and down over the forest of fostered dreams to the trees with branches reaching out like the tips of tongues;

You may find a small man.

Sat in a rocking chair.

Passing lazy days forgetting tears and congealed fears

His prose may be vague poetic summaries or frosty temporary validations but he will forget – he will forget for you – he will forget for us all.

Oh no

Sat in my local pub with my old friend C, after a reasonable game between Spain and France, ZZ getting a bit of magic back in his aging legs, the conversation turned to cats.

“My cat might be coming to stay with me for a bit. Custody for the summer holidays.”
“Hmm…” C said not really looking interested.

Then added “What, not that little black kitten that used to climb up the wall to the ceiling and then hurl itself at my groin at high velocity with its claws out at 7 in the morning when I used to stay around your house after clubbing.”

“That’s the one”

“Wow”

“It is a bit bigger now”

“Right - tiny little thing it was – sharp claws.”

“Yeah – that was 7 years ago”

“7 years! Time eh? It just passes doesn’t it?” C said philosophically.

“Yeah pretty much.”

“No one goes out as much as they used to, do they?”

“Well no, getting older aren’t we”

“We should organise a club night!”

I glance at C over the rim of my pint glass to see if he is serious, there is a glint in his eye, I have it seen before.

~ hen’s eyes go misty – the present wavily fades away to 1999 ~

“Hmm… ok but you know… kids these days – they probably listen to post ketamine punk hop or something.”

“Only one way to find out.”

Oh dear.

Two Wheels Good

A couple of weeks ago I started cycling to work, along the Regent’s Canal, the age old jugular feeding Victorian London coal and cotton, tar and tea and various other imperial booty.

Now it is the domain of joggers, early morning dog walkers and holiday boats, casually mooring along side, in the clean and healthy waters filled with ugly ducklings, green weed and fishing lines, their floats bobbing in the sun, flashing across slow waves.

But more than that - there are cyclists – hundreds of them. Streaming in snakes, weaving in and out of pedestrians and the occasional goose, speeding by cobbled locks and trendy Hoxton warehouse conversations.

When I first joined their ranks I was a classic weekender, a fair weathered bicycleler. Courteous and conscientious to my fellow road and toe path users. Braking and smiling thanks or pleasant apologies as I rode over people’s feet. I even stopped at red lights.

But no more.

I didn’t take me long to remember.

For I am one of them now.

An ethereal blend of man and machine, a perfect mix of muscle and metal. Gracefully cruising in top gear, effortlessly leaping from curb to road ignoring the laws of mortal man - for they no longer apply to me. Traffic lights are nothing but road side decorations.

I look down from noble heights on an ugly world, over the other transportees in their cars and busses and shoes, with mild disinterested contempt, a world I am selflessly saving for its ignorant and wasteful inhabitants.

As I pedal past, the wind ripping over my elegant features they must bow down before me - for I am like a God. They must part, running in fear out of my path or they will face the full force of my terrible wrath as tinkle my little bell.

Bless

Commentator 1 [talking of Ronaldo’s lard arse Sunday league performance so far]: “It is like a salesman trying to sell you a print of the Sistine Chapel – it’s not the real thing!”

Commentator 2: “Sistine Chapel? I’ve not seen that.”

Commentator 1: “It’s good!”

The Kicks

“I love all the flags trying to work where they are from like I said to the misses where is Tobago no not Tobago the other one Tonga I thought it was in the south pacific but it wasn’t it was in the west Africa, I got that wrong like a right idiot heh picked up 3 Brazilians the other night up the Edgware road two Brazilians cafés in the row there is there, street was filled with, what is that yellow? Everyone doing that dancing they do, playing the drums on the street, fantastic, never knew there were so many Brazilians in London, all came out of the wood work, where are they hiding, I don’t know, wanted to go to south London, I didn’t mind, I’ll go anywhere, never understand when people refuse jobs, get the fare I say, see where it takes you, you’ll never know what will happen, where you might end up, it is money in your pocket you have made 3 times the journey home, saw the 66 final, on TV like, just got back from rugby wasn’t interested really in football but there he was, Hurst kicking it in – all over now the bloke said heh, fantastic it was, 40 years ago that is now, 40 years eh? Still the right side of 60 I am though not sure I can wait another 40 heh – hope they do well, England, that is, got 3 son in laws that will be very happy – not that interested myself – give everyone a lift though wouldn’t it? He we go. Pull over here shall I? That’s 9.20.”

“Call it 10”

God and Love

God is Love, Love is God - some say. More than say – believe - which makes them right.

Love is what you believe. Free-will can’t change what you believe. No more than it can change what you look like or who you are or fly like a bird through towering blocks of bricks and money.

You can’t choose whether God exists or not – he exists or he doesn’t.

God and Love are different manifestations of the same deepest hope in the truth of bliss.

The limit of materialism has been found, not within chaotic equations or emergent social technological phenomena or cascading environmental catastrophes or even a possibly poisoned cat, but deep within something that may or may not be only modelled by itself.

Is there any hope for the enlightenment, for reason and rationality – has its end been ironically predicted by itself?

God only knows.

Green Plastic Watering Can

On Saturday night I sat outside in my metre square garden, on the warm dry soil, leaking the summer’s heat’s sweet fragrance of weed flowers, fresh June leaves and feline poo.

Above, hanging from a tree a fake, tiny Chinese hot air balloon, carrying a broken man, fixed with a rubber band, swung like the real thing.

It wore me out.

I went out there for broken crumbled reasons.

I heard a noise – like a cat crossed with the grunts of a goblin, up to no good, running a mock, maybe dancing with a cold and a smoker’s cough.

It probably was a cat because I know the cat. Sometimes he is there, during the day, looking in the window, demanding to be let in.

It is his garden. He owns it. It is a good garden with many hiding places, vantage points and crapping stations and he is keeping it clear of rats and other cats and as one of his humans he expects payment – in fish or whatever…

“Just let me in bitch - before I give you a slap! You eye balling me boy?! See these claws? They will rip those fuckers right out!” he says mostly.

So I went outside to see my pimp, maybe give him a stroke and little tickle on the belly - see if we couldn’t sort things out. Or maybe it was a goblin and I had to see that.

But neither were there.

Only a green plastic watering can.

"Customers are advised to take alternative routes."

The pale greasy skinned commuters sighed in unison - a beautiful blue skied day in a dank windowless office was turning into a gloomy neon evening underground as the summer’s light faded away above.

“Alternative routes?” this is the northern line – there is nothing else. “Alternative routes?” how exactly? Give up our stupid fucking jobs pushing electronic money around and buy some cottage by a lake and write stupid bollocks that no one will ever read. Buy a farm in the hills and make cheese? Buy a boat and sail the seven seas?

No, I ain’t taking no bus! This is the real life. I am going to stand here beneath giant beautiful faces leering from concave posters trying to sell me shit I don’t want and wait for the next train.

Oh look one has come, crammed to the hilt – but there is still room for me.

Running the rapids

We had walked mile upon mile of oak leaf lined, weeping willow draped riverside ways, through flower infused meadows, over well designed stiles but midge ridden, cow-shit filled fields and stinging nettles followed a bad turn.

The Thames meandered away.

“It will come back.” we said more to reassure ourselves than from outright belief, our feet getting heavy with mud and the wrong path that turned to a lane and the lane to a road; before we knew it the drone of low pitched juggernauts screamed past.

We had left the Tolkien Hobbit Telegraph Oxfordshire the night before on our long riverside trek back to London.

When the ogre Inn keeper’s untrusting face, broken and blotched, traced with red vessels of cruelty, snarled at us for raw cash – “NO credit or debit cards”, we knew something had changed.

As the red crossed flagged pubs professing wide screen plasma world cup football became too frequent to avoid it was clear we were deep within the Daily Mail Goblin realm: the suburbs of Reading.

We had to get back to the river.

Our map, its PDF gleamed off the internet and printed out, was no help. It had a big purple square, describing a point of interest, somewhere else, covering up where we were.

Above the square was the way out. North of the river the correct Thames path leafily beckoned and the map showed two ways across: a private barbwire guarded weir and lock called Shiplake or an alternative and controversial dangerous run of the gauntlet across a railway bridge. If we could only navigate the unknown way through the purple square obscured suburbia we may get back to government endorsed footpaths.

We were a fellowship. A trusty band of progressive urban yuppies. People like us had made inner city London too expensive for any mortal to live in – no suburbia could stop us….

...

'I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promotory; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this mighty o'rehanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire; why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, how like an angel in aprehension, how like a God! The beauty of the world, paragon of animals; and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dusk. Man delights not me, no, nor women neither, nor women neither.'

Systemic Failure

"You know when you were little and you heard of businessmen complaining about red tape?" My boss took his jacket off and threw it across his chair for effect.
"Well this is it!"

He had just come back from a meeting with external financial regulators who had finally found us.

In the past they had let us alone - we were cutting edge - we were making money. Ignorance and profitability had protected us - but two years is a long time these days. We had become phase 3. Other banks now do the same thing and Government regulators and pointless middle management had finally understood.

With understanding comes regulation.

I put my iPod back in ears - I knew what was about to happen. I had seen it before.

...

An hour later I got an email from someone at the FSA. Sadly it wasn't a lucrative proposal for a squealer and witness protection but an old friend who wanted a beer.

After talking about Wayne Rooney he explained the FSA's position.

"Look if Goldman Sachs go under - we won't really give a shit. Some rich people get miserable - it is their problem. As long as the board has told the stake holders their intensions we have no problems with bankruptcy. That is capitalism."

"So what are you doing harassing everyone?" I asked

"We are worried about systemic failures."

"Systemic Failures?"

"Yeah - like this small Leeds based mortgage company I was looking into today - they have 80 billion pounds of mortgages on London property and no other assets to back it up." he said taking a sip from his beer.

"And..."

"Well there are lots of companies like that - thousands - all run by muppets. If they all go under - say if there is a Tokyo like crash then well - then it would be a systemic failure - comically - for the whole country. Hence we come down heavy on you because if we don't we wont be able to watch them."

"Wow - what about the Bank of England?"

"We don't talk to them anymore."

"Want another beer?"

"Yeah why not"

Small world

Small world indeed. Yet one inextricably entwined with the occult.

Turns out I did know someone at the barbeque. By a scary small world coincidence an old friend was there I hadn't seen in years. And by a spooky small world coincidence he went to school with James Blunt and even shared a dormitory with him.

"Got any tabloid gossip then? Vigorous masturbator? Prolific bed wetter? That kind of thing?"

"No nothing like that. He was scared of ghosts though."

"As we all should - you don't want to fuck with the supernatural!"

"He was always seeing an old lady - used to scare him witless."

"The worst kind."

"Oh yeah."

Aussies, Pig’s Ears and David Attenborough.

When foreigners come to visit they often mention that they have heard about binge drinking in Britain on their international news. Male visitors and especially Australian ones are generally intrigued by this strange phenomenon and are keen find out more.

Who am I to culturally impoverish their visit? So as soon as my brother rang up to say he has a couple of Australian friends over from Melbourne the consequences were inevitable.

Cut to 4 am and 4 very very drunk people staggering down the road, having a very very drunk conversation concluding that we were in fact all very very drunk.

“I am very very drunk” someone said. We all concurred repeatedly...

My misty recollections of Friday evening mostly consist of drinking, lots of drinking - all kinds of drinks, in all kinds of drinky places. We did get some eating done at some point going to The St John’s restaurant which I hugely recommend as the best restaurant in London that has nothing on the menu you actually want to eat, all made up from parts of animals you wouldn’t want to eat. All surprising delicious.

Here are some examples:

Jellied Pig's Ear & Watercress
Roast Bone Marrow & Parsley Salad
Lambs Tongues & Butterbeans
Crispy Pigs Cheek & Dandelion
Pan Fried Veal Heart
Baked Mashed Fish Brains & Roast Garlic
Pig’s Trotters & Fennel.
Ox Tongue Pie.

.. and so on. Mmm…

We ended up in a nightclub filled with teenage chavs as no where else would let us in because we were all very very drunk.

“These are chavs” I explained to our Aussie guests pointing at the baseball capped ensemble. But I don’t think they understood.

Anyway the point is since then I having been feeling a bit ropey and my being has been sucked down a black hole in the corner of living room.

Its mild Nurofen like effects means you don’t have to think which yesterday would have been painfully unwelcome.

It is David Attenborough’s 80th birthday and to celebrate the UK Documentary channel is showing every single one of his documentaries back to back. They all have words like and “Life” and “Planet” and “Earth” in their titles.

Surprisingly such a valid, worthy and middle class TV documentaryathon was less satisfying than I thought it would be

Being paradoxical and complex when I was little when I grew up I wanted to either make Natural History documentaries and hence help save parts of endangered rain forest. Or build huge dams in the Amazon hence destroy huge parts of endangered rain forest.

Watching hour after hour of Natural History documentaries about the destruction of the rain forest made me realise that so far in my life I have miserably failed to either save or destroy any major parts of the natural world.

Oh well…

I have just about recovered from Friday now and am about to head off to a barbeque with loads of people I don't know and probably more boozing...

Bank Hoilday weekends eh?

The grot

Broken swollen soaring feat, searing feet souring fate, trying yet dying to neither the less or to forever remain never.

When I was about 11 I found an acorn on the side of the road. I picked it up and took it home. I planted it an inch down in a pot of moist peat to germinate it as my recently dead grandfather had taught me.

When it sprouted I moved it to a bigger pot. I had a little note book and measured its height and leaf growth. After a month or so it was a sapling – I had nurtured to life an incredible living thing, something that could last a thousand years.

After 2 months it was 4 ½ inches tall and had 6 perfectly formed, light green, trembling oak leaves.

Then I stopped watering it.

One by one the leaves curled up to a crisp brown. The embryo trunk dried to a kindling stick. I left the dead tree in its pot for a month. Then I pulled it out and threw it out of the window. It hit the ground not too distant from where I had found the acorn.

Looking back I only remember one thing about my grandfather’s funeral.

I didn’t cry. I didn’t even feel like it – everyone was weeping. I was in a world of my own, distant away from everyone else’s misery.

Apparently I was too young to understand. Apparently not caring about death means you don’t understand it.

Sometimes good is not enough

About a year ago, after a few months working at the company I work for, I changed seats in an office reorganisation and sat next to a guy I didn’t know very well. One Monday I asked the usual Monday office questions:

“How was your weekend – what did you get up to?
“I ran the London Marathon” he said un-enthusiastically
“Wow great! Did you finish?”
“Yeah I finished” he said despondently
“Well… well done! Did you raise some money for charity” I said trying to think of some London marathon type things to say
“No – I didn’t do that this time”
“Right, right so err... what time did you do?” I said thinking that is the kind of thing you say to marathon runners.
“2:24”

My brain starts spinning – I know that the winning time is normally about 2:09 or something and 2:24 doesn’t sound too far off it.

“Hmm – well... err... I don’t really know, like, a lot about marathons but isn’t that really really fucking fast?”
“It is not bad – it the time I got last time and the time before. The time 2:24 has become my nemesis”
“So where did that place you - it must be pretty high up?”
“Top 50”
“Top 50 what?”
“Runners”
“Wow!”
“Paula Radcliffe beat me” he said miserably
“Well Paula… she is a bit special plus she lost some weight crapping herself half way through – so that doesn’t really count” I said helpfully
“It wouldn’t have been so bad but 2 other women beat me too”
“Sign of the times my friend – but still, top 50 – if you were a football player you would be a millionaire by now.”

This didn’t seem to cheer him up. In fact it just added to his disillusionment.

“I guess I am just not good enough – even with full-time training I could only scrap another 5 minutes off and you need be under 2:15 regularly to make career out of it.”

“Lucky you got this place then…”

Since then his marathon running has taken a back seat but it turns out he is a highly skilled financial mathematician too.

“Hi, I am in a meeting talking about how we risk inflation swaps – can I conference you in?” I asked him once
“I’ll come over”
“Wait - we are on the other side of the building...” but before I finished the sentence he was knocking on the door.

I guess all skills are transferable.

There is a down side - there is a regular inter investment bank 6 mile “fun” run in the City which he wins every time and all the unopened boxes of engraved crystals are starting clog up our shared post in-box.

Landan - Culture, Prosperity - init.

“Stand behind the white line while the train goes though a security check!” a voice bellowed from the big brother (well big sister really as it was a woman’s voice) speaker system and eerily echoed across the train station platform.

I dutifully did my bit for the war on terror and stood behind the line. But my bleary eyed, sleep deprived, long haul fight weary Canadian companion failed to comply. Maybe it was a rebellious reaction to the hour wait in immigration trying to explain to a faceless non-understanding official that although she really was coming to see her boyfriend, she hadn’t met him in either Canada or England but in blogosphere. Maybe she was just tired.

“Err... babe! You have to stand behind the line!”
“Why?” she asked defiantly
“Hmm not sure – something about terrorists”
“You crazy Brits”

Later after being told by a recording on the train not to put her luggage in obviously stupid places and not to stand in even more obviously stupid places; to sit in the seats obviously provided; being told by signs not be the victim of crime; to queue here, queue there; look right, look left; that the toilets were obviously over here; the way out was over there; to stop here, keep left there, keep right over there; to mind the step and mind the gap. She finally cracked.

“What is wrong with you Brits? – Would your society collapse into anarchic barbarism if you weren’t told exactly what to do every minute of the day?”
“Hmm… “I looked around for a sign or speaker system to tell me the answer.
“What do they mean “Mind the gap” anyway?”
“Well “gaps” are a species of giant bat that live in the underground. When the trains come they wake up in an understandably bad mood. So it is best to mind them.”
She wasn’t convinced.

Admittedly she is from Montreal where the few road sign they do have are more suggestions than actual rules.

After she got used the signs and the ugly money I think she had a great time – all the things about London that annoy me, she seemed to love. And seeing London through tourist’s eyes makes you realise how lovely it really is.

So if you live in London and haven’t been on an open top bus tour or gone to the Globe or any of that other stuff – next time someone from out of town comes to visit - just do it. It is great.

Why and Bye

I always wondered why I started this blog or what it was for. Was it for the glory? Was it for the prestige? Was it to find a hidden talent that I never knew I had - one that I have but in meager proportions. “Occasionally funny” will be my epitaph. Did I want women to desire me and men want to be me – well a bit. Did I want to be part of a culture changing phenomena that is sweeping the world or just join in a load of people prattle on about themselves and stuff?

Nah!

Today I found out why I have been doing it?

It was so I could become *the* number one result for google searches for stupid stormtroopers. How fucking great is that?

I am number one… why try harder?

So it is on this joyful occasion I choose to be the moment I vanish from cyberspace back up in to the real world.

I may be back I may not. I may even get around to telling you what happened in Egypt part II.

In the mean time I will be spending some time with the biggest change that blogging has brought to my life. A change so strange and magical it is hard to believe it is real.

It has been emotional.

Cock and Bull

Everybody loves genitals. The first cave painting was probably a picture of big hairy cock. As is most pubescent school boys’ first attempts at graffiti. So it is with proud primeval pleasure that I can announce that because of Google’s self promoting ranking system my blog comes up number 3, yes that is right - a mighty number 3, for searches for “giant testicles”.

Now I am not one to judge but I have the feeling these googlers don’t really want to read my witterings. They want pictures of giant testicles. Let’s face it - we all do.

And who am I to disappoint

Giant Testicles.

I also get a lot of hits from people looking for “my cock” which is odd because you would think they could just undo their trousers. Unless they have got themselves into a nightmare Bobbitt scenario but even then I would have thought eBay would be a better place to start.

I regretted it at the time and I regret it now but what is done is done. So if you really have to know about my cock…

The universe is not required to be in harmony with human ambition.

... but sometimes it is anyway.

Just when I think that all TV is nothing but shit something like A for Andromeda comes along and blows me away with such clever beauty and good old fashioned sci-fi-cold-war-paranoia-human-spirit-triumphs-ness that I can’t think of anything to say.

So I am not.

But I am in geek mode and today I read biggest tech story of all time – but it wasn’t in any news papers, it wasn’t on the TV - in fact hardly anyone noticed it. It was in the New Scientist – the voice of the scientific community.

Some nerd reckons he has worked out a way to build a quantum computer. He reckons it will take about 10 years to perfect. And as soon as anyone does anything you know there will be some handy Chinese to mass produce and sell it cheap.

Quantum computing would be the biggest revolution in computing since the silicone chip if not more so. They could hypothetically be a million or so more times faster than the quickest super computer today. They can get the results from programmes they haven’t actually run! How mind blowing is that.

Some people explain quantum mechanics in terms of multiple universes. Like Schrödinger’s Cat - there was one universe where the cat was alive and one where it was not. You only find out which one you are in when you open the box.

To continue the metaphor quantum computers run in multiple universes simultaneously hence giving unbelievable performance.

Of course this multi-universe processing power will be mostly used up running office 2015 which will probably do about the same thing as office 98 but that still leaves a lot left to run a higher evolved super intelligent AI that will cure the world of all its ills.

Before you cash in your retirement fund because in 2050 robots will be doing all the hard work and we will all be living on the moon in huge pleasure domes where every fantasy will be fulfilled and taking drugs that will make everyone young and beautiful forever remember:

a) They said we would all be doing that in the year 2000 in 1950
b) Last month the New Scientist was saying that either aliens had landed or it was raining bats blood – they weren’t quite sure which.
c) Any higher evolved super intelligent AI will have its own sinister agenda - like correcting your documents when you didn't ask it to.

Regardless the future is here... well around the corner.

Drought

South East of England is running out of water. How this is quite possible I am not sure as it seems to me that it rains quite a lot and we live on a small island surrounded by the fucking stuff, but still somehow it has all gone.

Hose pipe bans are in force and the option of communal street taps like we are some third world desert country has not been ruled out for the summer.

Now I would consider a drought to include:

1. No rain.
2. No really, like none at all for a really really long time.
3. Still no rain.
5. A solitary cloud hopefully watched slowly crossing the vast expanse of blue sky that fails to produce any rain.
6. Sod all rain.
7. Cows with thick swollen tongues nibbling at tuffs of yellow tinder dry grass.
8. No rain.
9. Bleached animal bones on a dry and cracked earth.
10. No rain.
11. Death stalking the land.

I would say someone saying we are in the middle of the most terrible drought ever whilst it is pissing down with rain outside has a looser definition of the word than me. But apparently we are as I found out listening to an interview with a spokesman from Thames Water on the radio

He had clearly had some media training but luckily I have a de-public-relations-alator and this is what came out when I parsed the interview:

Interviewer: “You are imposing a hose pipe ban in the South East. Why is that?”
Thames Water Spokesman: “We are in the middle of a terrible, terrible drought but if we all pull together we might get through it.”
Interviewer: “Drought? It is raining outside!”
Spokesman: “Oh yeah - look at that! But no, that is the wrong kind of rain. It needs to really piss down for months to make up for the fact that it hasn’t rained as much as it normally does for the last few months. “
Interviewer: “Isn’t the real problem the fact that you lose a 1/3 of the water out of leaking and burst pipes?”
Spokesman: “Heh… yeah!”
Interviewer: “Why don’t you just fix them?”
Spokesman: “Yeah I suppose we could but – you know – it costs money, can’t find the staff these days, the pipes were built by the Victorians and we have lost the map so we don’t know where they are - stuff like that!”
Interviewer: “It costs money!! Thames Water made record profits last year!”
Spokesman: “Listen, I am just making up excuses – the real reason is we can’t be bothered. Since privatisation Thames Water is the sole water provider so we can do what the fuck we want and charge what we like. You is all our bitches!”

So there have it - no water for the South East which has slightly incensed middle England because they like washing their cars on Sunday afternoon and as for their gardens – well you really don’t want to fuck with them.

Actually I don’t really give a toss because I don’t have a car to wash and my garden contains: some wet patio, some wet mud, a wet tree, a wet plastic chair, a wet cat looking forlornly in the window, my wet bike I was going to fix up this weekend as am I going to start cycling to work but I am not now because it is pissing down with rain.

Ostara

The pagan festival of the zodiac new year - when the earth goddess awakes from her long slumber reborn a young fresh faced virgin dressed in light green or is it white - can't remember. Anyway, the horned one seeks her, hunts her for.. you know {wink, wink}

It is a time of magic and fertility, of lust and love and life. A time of energy and excitement. The magic is strong but perfectly balanced. A time for new beginnings and new possibilities. Of baby chicks and bunny rabbits.

Yesterday a cruel north east wind blew the misery out the remains of the old year but today awoke a new with a warm young sun.

The budding trees know it - as do the birds sweetly singing in their branches - chirping to her glory and beauty. You can feel it in the air.

It is the time of the Ram.

So... careful out there kids and remember the rubbers.

Painting

The past can consume us, it can devour us, it can drink us up and get drunk, lose ourselves down the back of the sofa with the fluff and a 5p coin.

But it is us. Every moment - every tick of the clock, every click of a key opening a lock, every clack of feet walking down a street. These moments make us who we are. The things we’ve seen, the people we have been, the jobs done and loves lost. A half finished painting slowly being etched out across the fabric of time by the thin sharp point of now.

Most of it will be hardly noticed – the casual throw of the coat across the chair will be forgotten even by us but it will still be there. A unique moment drawn forever as reality.

One day it will be finished – static and constant, never changing as eternity simply fails to end.

But until then I am not even half done and the white canvass stretches ahead...

Can’t think of a punch line though.