what a wonderful life

Keeping the kittens…

2012-02-26T18:21:00.000Z

You know, these last few days of kittens and puppies and fluffy ducks have made me wonder why I ever bothered at all. Why all these words?

So, suddenly I’m back to 2009, almost at the start of this crazy roller-coaster journey, nearing the end as I refuse to be boxed by authority, madmen made clever, and plain simple charlatan, bullying boys.

Why all these words? Whoosh!

What is it that lets some creeping idea under the wire and into my mind, waking me sharp from dream, five in the morning, demanding that I embroider it into words? Why am I compelled to pull that slippery thing out from my head and make it solid, forcing it tumbled onto the page to be some few sentences? What makes me think that they, strung together with hesitant rearrangement, could ever make worth reading? Who’s interested in my thoughts, my experience, my point of view - my slant - and do I really have anything worthy of a say?

I hope so. I can’t stop you see.

The more I write, the more I seem to want to write. I don’t know why exactly. It isn’t painful; it isn’t a hunger that needs to be fed. It isn’t desperate; it’s just there, consistent and waiting for me to pick up the pen and set it free. When I’m doing it I’m happy and when I’m not doing it – well, I’m waiting to be happy. I smile as I write, I sometimes laugh out loud, occasionally my eyes moisten – but only when I write of things long lost.

I love the taste of taking a whim, tuning and honing, moulding and sharpening, until it stands tall on the page a fully-fledged read. I enjoy the craft, the journey, every twist and turn of the road, never quite sure of where it is going or when the journey has ended – a cliché, and an adventure, my adventure.

I want to be read - but at the end, if nobody reads me, I’ll write for myself – read it over and over, change after minor change, and then read it again and smile, or laugh, or cry.

Why do I write this stuff? Because I have to, and I can, and I do - less than a thousand words a day and I’m lost and lost and lost.

Maybe I’ll blog here less, but I’m smiling now – and it feels good.

I'm keeping the kittens though.

...

2012-02-25T17:53:00.003Z

Funny how these cutesy pictures get almost as many comments as my blog ramblings, more actually.

Something to think about I guess.

Anyway, as requested - ducks... and a cute iddle kitten.

...

2012-02-24T17:26:00.002Z

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2012-02-23T17:55:00.002Z

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2012-02-22T07:55:00.000Z

On hold...

2012-02-21T09:32:00.002Z

I'm beginning to wonder if this is such a good idea. Sharing your thoughts publicly in a random way seems to invite criticism from those that don't get it and sometimes even from those who do. I suppose I could tailor my posts to be rational and sensible, acceptable to the unimaginative, warming to those in need of comfort, absolute and total drivel about kittens, and puppies, and sunny afternoons spent drinking lemonade. I might even theme it and give it a good solid purpose.

But this blog was always and always will be 'all about me'.

I need to think about that so this blog is closed for a while.

Living in my past…

2012-02-20T17:37:00.005Z

"Another Monday, another week" I said.

You know, somebody told me to stop living in the past today. Facebook is a strange place, a place where comment can be interpreted in any way the reader wishes and strings of a conversation can grow like a Chinese whisper and what starts off as a flower can easily end up as a cabbage or even a slug. Words are so easily open to interpretation (thank God and damn it).

I posted about how much I miss driving to Scarborough on a Monday morning, I haven’t done it for over a year and I do miss driving to Scarborough on a Monday morning to meet with people I liked seeing. I do miss driving my company car, watching the sunrise as I powered along the rise and fall of the A64. My Monday mornings are dull these days compared to that, my week isn’t quite as hectic or as much fun, but hey it has its highs. Yes, I miss ‘back then’ and yes, I do want to remember and certainly don’t want to forget. ‘Back then’ was a really good time most of the time and those memories are my help on grey days (not that I need to get any help). Those memories make me smile.

Stop living in the past? Just why would I want to stop living in my past, it’s a good place to visit. Anyway, how could I stop even if I wanted to, how can any of us? We are the sum total of all our past experience, we are our pasts, that is how it is meant to be. Without our past experiences we are nothing, ask anyone who knows an Alzheimer sufferer. That spider crawling across our childhood pillow has become the scream each time we see a spider in a bath, just as each time I see a picture of a palm tree I’m immediately taken back to the most wonderful morning of my life. I can’t divorce my memory from my now and why would I want to, why would anyone even expect me to?

Our minds are full of memories, some up front and others locked in grey cabinets behind the doors of double locked rooms. Our subconscious can make us forget experiences that are too painful for us to remember. We all do it, we have a few incidents that we can hardly remember at all, still there but not known about. It’s a protection thing, a mechanism that nature has given us to keep us safe, similar to a mechanism that damps down our repetitive and boring experiences; how dull to remember each and every time you’ve washed up, every dish, plate and spoon.

There are ways to get to these hidden memories, access those rooms deep inside your mind and confront the experience that it makes so hard to find, it’s called regression therapy and it’s a powerful thing. Of course, you can try to live entirely in the present, shut off what’s in those double locked rooms, but everything is influenced by your past and I for one think that a good thing, a survival thing. If our past didn’t tell us that putting your hand into the fire might hurt, then you’d constantly put your hand into the flames for fun.

Yes, if there is one thing that I’ve learnt recently, living in the past, or at least reflecting on it, is a good thing. Without that how are we going to make our futures better? Putting it all behind you and soldiering on regardless, living entirely in the present. How stupid. How dangerous. Didn’t someone once say “Lest we forget”?

I’ll live where I want and I’ll keep my memories, even if it does mean I spend some of my time living in the past.

From up on my hill...

2012-02-19T18:18:00.006Z

You know from up on my hill I should be able to see things clearly. From up on my hill I should be able to look down and see where I am going. From up on my hill I should be able to see how to get there. From up on my hill I should be able to see the obstacles and work out how to avoid them. From up up my hill I should be able take in the possibilities and see how to build them.

From up on my hill it's all possible.

All I have to do now is climb my hill.

We are all stars...

2012-02-17T18:22:00.002Z

Slowly expanding the entire universe shares a common set of elements. At the start of the early universe, when the stars were rushing away from each other growing in numbers and growing in speed, the only elements were hydrogen and helium. It was the stars that made all of the other natural ones, the lighter elements within the stars fusing to create heavier elements right at the core of the stars where it’s hot and pressurised. Just imagine all those atoms colliding, faster and faster, collision after collision, at speeds high enough to stop the electromagnetic repulsion of nuclei in a frenzy of nuclear fusion.

Just imagine as you look up into the night sky, separated by vast distance and by vast time, all those stars creating more elements as they die and splutter, coming together and falling apart. So many of those stars you see out there aren’t there at all any more. They’re already dead, their element making finished, just an echo in the fifty billion stars of our galaxy within the fifty billion galaxies that are tumbling around out there wherever and whatever there is.

Just imagine the stars churning out new elements as they pass – copper and carbon, silicon and silver, lithium and lead, and who knows maybe even some that they haven’t presented yet.

Everything made by stars and everything made of stars. The screen you are looking at, the seat you are sitting on, the floor that seat rests on, the air in the room around you, the food digesting in your stomach, and you, and me. We are all made of stars.

Next time you look into the night sky think about that. All those stars burning away and out - birthing, living, dieing, becoming dust, reforming into something else, someone else.

Makes me feel very small and vast at the same time; I’m made of stars.

Who am I?...

2012-02-16T19:58:00.006Z

Who shall I be today? I know who I want to be but I doubt that I’ll get the chance to be him again. I wonder if anyone else feels like I do – a little unsure of who they’ve become and not at all sure that they like who they’re becoming. Of course we all end up as our father or mother apparently so there’s not much too be done about it anyway.

Actors must have such a great time; pretending to be so many people, playing a variety of roles, a rich variety of characters - unless of course you are Michael Caine. I guess we all have several characters in us, roles we play, various and variant others who we pull out in different circumstances dependent on audience. All split personalities to lesser of greater extents. Two faced? Maybe. Multi-faceted? Who knows?

Then there are out Facebook friends, people that we might have worked with or sat next to for years in the real world, but you only really find out about once you’ve friended them on Facebook. I sometimes amazed to find out that somebody I thought I knew quite well plays the bongos or loves the smell of horse manure or has a twin or loves, maybe even hearts, Barry Manilow.

You can be anybody you want to be online, anonymous and mysterious, interesting and sexy, stunning, outrageous with a mystical username or even an alter-ego… Hypnoboy.

For a while there back in the day I even wandered Second-Life before my First-Life became so complicated and fantastical that I couldn’t really be sure which was which any longer. I think my name was Narstril Dunestrider and I had some really nice yellow boots which I bought from a virtual shop in a virtual city for virtual Linden dollars purchased with real world pounds... yes, I know.

Anyway, the question isn’t ‘who shall I be today’ it’s more ‘I y’am what I y’am’ as Popeye would say.

Yep, seems like I am what I am. Now if only I can work out who that is.

Post Valentine’s Day ramblings…

2012-02-15T18:58:00.006Z

So that’s it for another year, been and gone, with hardly a kiss or a tender whisper.

Well, Saint Valentine is for younger muffs to enjoy, me I’m just a lawnmower you can tell me by the way I walk.

Of course, I don’t subscribe to the notion that St. V. was gay, although I believe there is some limited evidence to support this; mainly a 12^th century graffiti on a Roman toilet wall where some wit has scratched ‘Saint V. is a gay bottom.’ Hardly, irrefutable proof though I think you might agree.

Of course this could be the last year that we celebrate the day without the new St. Valentine’s tax as proposed by David Cameron. Apparently love isn’t actually that good for you and costs the Health Service almost a billion pounds a year. Kissing can cause gum disease, cuddling can lead to internal bleeding, and of course the more intimate love stuff can lead to numerous nasty ailments including nasty rashes and blindness.

To combat this, a new Government bill proposes a number of tax reforms:

‘Kissing Tax’ will tax all kissing, although quick pecks on the cheek (single only) from bona-fide blood relatives will be exempt.

‘Pink Tax’ will tax the colour pink. Government opinion holds that Pink has become far too popular in recent years and the government is hoping that the taxation of pink will lead to blue becoming the new pink over time and with further legislation.

‘Red Tax’ will tax the colour red. Government opinion holds that Red has become far too bright in recent years and the government is hoping that the taxation of red will lead to black becoming the new red over time and with further legislation.

‘Heart shape Tax’. Heart shapes in any form are to be taxed at the higher rate and if red or pink a super-tax of up to but no more than sixty percent will be charged. Some breaks may be given to black hearts, but this is yet to be confirmed.

‘Lines of kisses Tax’. In a move to stop the overuse of kisses on cards and letters a ‘lines of kisses’ tax will be considered. A government working party is currently considering how to implement this in light of confusion around similar lines of the letter x, as in "Fxxx oxx Cameron."

‘Salt Tax’. This will apply to any salt cause by shedding tears of joy, particularly in situations where marriage and/or engagement are involved. It is rumoured that in some circumstances salt tax could be as high as ninety percent, although this mainly concerns other salty bodily fluids.

Other taxes under consideration: ship tax, light tax, food salt tax, water tax, death tax, spice tax, woollen-cap tax… makes you think.

Here’s to Saint Valentine and death to all politicians.

The all seeing eye...

2012-02-14T19:33:00.004Z

Ah, the all-seeing eye. My thoughts, wide and windswept as they may be, are just a whisper in this universe of ours, my actions even less, almost silent. I enjoy this mediocrity, this lack of significance in that bigger picture. My own lack of significance. You know there really should be a mark to denote sarcasm. How about this :}

So why when I put ‘Dali Doodle’ into the Google image search and three of my doodles pop up at 3, 11, and 13 (beating even the Dali himself) do I bask in the warmth that these small pictures fill me to almost bursting with?.

Idiocy? Stupidity? Pride? Arrogance?

Well, I used to be a stupid, proud, arrogant, idiot until I lost my pride and had the arrogance kicked out of me by my superiors :} Did me good mind, like a dose of the liver salts or a dip in a bath full of ice cubes :} Yes, I’m a better person for it :}

The all seeing eye :}

Anyway my doodles are like my children, when finished I send them out into the world and forget them. Or at least I try to. After all they are just doodles, a few moments of my time and some ink, some blood, and my trusty felt tip pens and when God created felt tip pens he surpassed even sliced bread. Felt tips are truly the miracle of miracles.

But enough of my puerile pen perversions :}

If one of my children should turn up on your doorstep please take them in, have them nicely framed, and then hang them or beware the wrath of the all seeing eye.

Putting down roots…

2012-02-13T18:39:00.001Z

You can spend your whole life trying to put roots into the ground, strong, deep, roots that will stop you tumbling over in the wind, crashing to the ground with that creak of the “Timberrrrrr!” that we all know from countless television shows where nobody or somebody is or isn’t under the tree as it falls.

Putting out root after root, tiny filament growing from tiny filament, thickening and filling, growing longer, going deeper, until one day you feel so firmly rooted that nothing, no wind or storm, can make you topple ever and you stand in your landscape tall, proud, and strong, and look around you. “Look at me, look at me. See what a strong tree I have become.”

And you are.

For years you are.

And then one day you feel a change. Not in yourself, but in the land around you, slight at first, a trembling in the soil but growing stronger all the time. The soil is becoming thin; it blows away as dust upon the wind and, trickling through your roots, falls away and is gone for ever leaving behind a vacuum where once there was rich earth. The ground, once firm, sags; and the rain that always drained away before stays, clogging your roots and making you shiver with its puddle touch.

It is this that makes you change.

Now, you bend in the wind almost to a keel. Now, the slightest breeze causes fear where once there was only courage. And now - you have begun to wither. You want to get up and move, go somewhere else and start again, put down new roots, try to grow afresh. But you are a tree; your roots have gone too deep. They’ve kept you upright all these years but now they hold you fast, have started to suck you down into the hole that has opened beneath you and in your wooden hearted centre you know that it is only a question of time before there’s nothing left, not a leaf, or a branch, or an intertwined root. Not even a stump to mark that singular spot where you once grew.

Just an empty space where once there was a tree.

Set adrift on memory bliss...

2012-02-12T18:10:00.015Z

There’s a haven in my house that sometimes I forget about, not going there for years (yes, years) at a time. A place where so many of my thoughts, memories, and dreams reside and yet I turn my back on it and go about things almost as if they never were important.

It's a place that really hasn’t changed for almost twenty years when Gaynor and I decorated and furnished it in a light airy style which is comforting and comfortable - if a bit twee and chintzy and even shabby in that shabby chic way. No leather here, no bold colours or brilliant bright statements – just an overwhelming calm.

I love my special room - The upstairs lounge. In summer it gets the golden light of the evenings, in winter the snowflakes drift gently past its windows in fifty different ways.

I built the display cupboards and the window seat; I laid the white washed flooring and scumbled the cornice, I even re-tiled and renovated the original marble fireplace. It was a labour of love...

Inside are so many precious things. Our collection of a hundred or so china cats, Wedgwood, one-offs, Doulton, and Tai-Wan. The massive conch shells we brought back from the Windward Isles, a huge basket of collected here-and-there pine cones, a woollen Chinese rug, some rescued brought-back houseplants, my sketches of Barbados, glass, and wood, and light, white china elephant plant stands, and memories.

Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes the sound of my own voice, sometimes I just listen to the far away sounds and the close by sounds, the sounds inside my room and the sounds outside my room, setting myself adrift on memory bliss and thinking 'surely one day I will find myself' and watching a paper doll dancing in the air outside the window, the day full of birds, a sky of honey as a man in a bowler hat and suit floats horizontally away.

... Anyway that’s enough. Why write about when I can sit in? I’m off to light the fire and watch the swirling fog outside the windows, after all I used to be friends with reality. But not in this room.

In this room I dream.

One of our washing machines is missing…

2012-02-11T17:46:00.011Z

Well not exactly missing, one of my washing machines has broken.

Yes, one of them, I have two; one at home and the other is at my little cottage in Wales.

It’s my washing machine in Wales that has broken. Well, when I say my washing machine, I should probably say Gaynor’s - after all it can hardly be mine as I don’t know how to use it. Well, it has twenty programs and slots for washing powder AND that conditioner stuff that smells like freshly washed linen (!!!), and I always want to open the door too soon, and I’m not really sure how to empty it properly. Actually, I don’t know how to use either, or for that matter how many sugars I take in my tea! Just joking about the sugars – I’m pretty sure that it’s three. I’ll check with Gaynor to be sure though.

Anyway, back to the broken washing machine. It broke a few weeks ago and every time it’s turned on it fuses the electricity. It must be shorting or jumping or some such thing (well, I’m not Nikola Tesla am I!) In the normal run of things I might try to get it repaired, but then we are dealing with Wales and North Wales at that, darkest, deepest North Wales and the Llyn Peninsula no less. Tradesmen are hard to come by on the Llynnnnnn and when you do come by them they seem to be very busy walking away from you – fast. And even when you do, by some miracle, trick them into answering their phone you usually find that it’s their dad/son/uncle you need to be talking to and he’ll ring you back as he’s out on a call… or they pretend to talk to you in Welsh… or you have the right person but he doesn’t do washing machines despite his card saying “all makes of washing machines repaired… or you are out of the area: ME - “But you only live six miles away.” HIM - “Yes, outside the area, I don’t do the travel you see.” – or you ring him only to find that he’s dead… “Yes, I’m sorry, I’m dead you see. Died last Wednesday, funeral’s Tuesday, no flowers – it’s Chapel you see.”

North Wales… I ask you! I once asked a plumber I accosted in the High Street to come and fix the toilet in our caravan. I knew he was a plumber because it said so on his van, he was even a “caravan plumbing specialist” according to his business card. He said that he was going to come around in the afternoon… of course he didn’t say which afternoon - it’s a good job that we only use the caravan for storage. He’ll be around eventually I guess – unless he’s dead, he's his own dad/son/or uncle, or we’ve become outside the area by some change of plumbing area boundaries.

Of course there is always an upside, and the upside of the broken washing machine being in Wales is that Wales is in the countryside, well most of it is, certainly our part, and the countryside has streams. Now to my mind having a stream nearby should negate the need for a washing machine, a few rocks, a bar of soap, and some good old-fashioned elbow grease… but of course Gaynor doesn’t seem to agree. I don’t know… how these mod-cons do so seem to spoil a woman.

So a new washing machine it is then. Shouldn’t be too hard, there’s only one shop in the area; “Which one would you like madam, the one on the left or the one on your right? Yes, they are the same, but we like to give our customer’s choice.”

Oh well, the couple that won the lottery this week had just had their washing machine break, so who knows… maybe lightening will strike twice.

What do you think Mr Tesla?

Tin can men…

2012-02-09T19:55:00.006Z

Tin-can men have started to appear in our road; pinned to fences and telegraph poles like ancient spacemen or mystical gee-gaws. I’ve no idea what they are meant to mean, their significance, but they stare down watching the world go by hardly noticed by the passing passers-by.

They are unobtrusive, almost invisible, quietly watching for who knows what? They don’t shout out, they’re carefully placed, sitting above the eye-line or close to the ground where nobody looks and not so bright as to draw attention.

Yes you have to look hard – or know they are there.

Where did they come from? How did they get there I wonder? Just who would be crazy enough to make these things for no good reason and then crucify them with pins and nails, quiet statements about goodness-knows-what?

After all – it’s not like a street is a beach is it? Just who would be mad enough to do it? I really have no idea.

Sticky finger...

2012-02-08T18:32:00.004Z

Some of you have commented that some of my blog posts have been a little morose recently, downright depressing even. Well, maybe that's so and maybe it's not, but never one to ignore an audience (such as it is) I've tried tonight to lift the mood a little and what better way than with a doodle of a stick man.

Now, I've been drawing stick men all my life, but recently I've drawn more stick men than - well, more stick men than you can shake a stick at. Such is the world of glass. Not all stick me need to be overly sticky though, some can be a little more free-form and flowing - a stickman with attitude.

So here he is a chip off the old block; my stick man with attitude all purple bedecked and crown-ed with a crown. Just look at those almighty fancy shoes and the way with him with his digit stick as he gives the world a sticky stick man finger.

Stick it to them Sticky.

And who knows, perhaps old sticky might stick around, even appear on Stickly Dancing.

And so to finish with a joke: What's brown and sticky?

Disneyed Dickens - a rant...

2012-02-07T08:56:00.008Z

Charles Dickens was born 200 years ago today. It seems hardly credible. 200 years seems like such a long time ago, but then it is.

I can’t pretend to have read all of his work, or even that much of it really; but I have read some and what I've read I’ve enjoyed, and then of course there are the films and the TV and radio adaptations which, as I’m sure you’ll be aware by now, I find radio to be the most satisfying. As for the films and TV… well they vary to such a degree but one thing I’m sure of – Disney should not be allowed anywhere near Mr Dickens’ work.

Looking at Google’s header today I was dismayed, nay appalled, to find that they’d Disneyed-Dickensed-up the Google logo with some simpering, cutesy, characters that may or may not be from a Dickens novel. You can vaguely see who these characters might be, but all that sugar and fluffy snow tends to get in the way. All it needs is a few characterised cartoon mice and we’d have a full-blown Disney movie in the making, maybe ‘What the Dickens!’ – see the astounding story of Charlie Dickens’ life (or as they would put it Chuck Dickens’s) with all his original gorgeous characters brought to life and becoming part in the action in this real-life feature length animation…

Oh, noooo… I hope that the Disney people don’t see that, just look what they did to Grimm and Anderson, Pinocchio and Robin Hood, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and mice in general…

Just what gives Disney the right to think that they can retell and reinvent the classics, making them into colourful easy-watching fairy tales for children who will never read the books (unless of course it’s the Disney picture-book) and encouraged by adults who never read the books either.

There’s nothing cosy or twee about Dickens, nothing simpering or gooey. Dickens wrote gritty tales of life and death, hardship and squalor, deceit and retribution, murder and faithlessness. His stories were real, they make you laugh and cry, they make you consider who you are in the light of what he shows you…

And all of this without a cartoon cat in sight.

What if somebody did the same to Mark Twain I ask you?
Oh, they did.

Okay, I’ve made my point. I’ll leave it there. Happy birthday Mr Dickens, I vow to read more of your stuff this year.

Reading by candlelight...

2012-02-06T19:21:00.016Z

At night we light candles in our living room, a long line of them on the mantelpiece, just tea lights encased in glowing glass globes, penny tea lights, a circle of wax inside a metal ring with a wick at its centre - a little light, a little warmth, big glow of comfort.

There’s something in that candlelight that’s like nothing else except maybe the glow of an open fire. We have that too on chilly evenings. Candlelight and fire – there’s nothing quite like it, there I’m repeating myself and there’s comfort in that as well. It knocks all the central heating and fluorescent lights into a cocked hat. Not that I know why anything should get knocked into a cocked hat or why it should be a cocked hat rather than a bowler or a topper. That's one in the picture, or at least how I imagine one to be.

Sometimes I also imagine what the world would be like if fire and candles were all we had for light and heat, like in the ‘olden days’ as we called them way back when. Just how could anybody read by candlelight? On the few occasions that I’ve been dropped into a power-cut candles have seemed so wholly inadequate as a lighting source to manage by. Cosy and comforting, but a little short on light for reading.

Still, for a long time that’s all there was until suddenly the world moved forwards and all of the candlestick makers set sail for other shores on a baked potato in a tiny bucket of water.

So here’s my point: the world moves forward and suddenly nobody wants your candles. It leaves you in the dark for a while, floating this way and that in your bucket inside a baked potato and then after a while you just get used to it – like reading by candlelight I guess.

Note to self: under no circumstance allow them to make the world move on from felt tip pens.

In a pickle...

2012-02-05T15:14:00.003Z

I like cooking. I like throwing open the cupboard and seeing what we have in, peering into the back of the fridge and looking in the crisper trays to check what is about to go over, and opening all the freezer draws to find that bargain that’s been forgotten all about - but with a little creativity and imagination could be made into a delicious meal.

I like cooking, I like thrift, and I hate waste.

Believe it or not when we last roasted a chicken we made it into four roast chicken dinners, four chicken and mushroom pot pies with flaky pastry lids, and six portions of chicken and vegetable soups. Yes, I even boiled the bones to make stock. Well, these days you have to don’t you? All that for £2.50! (a marked down organic bargain from Sainsbury’s; not that I care about that organic thing).

This morning, as I prepared dinner for this evening (just simple fare, no shopping required) I wondered why we have so many recipe books. At the last count is was a little over 100! After all, cooking is about using what you have in, not buying in to make something; and inevitably you never have half the things you need for the recipe - just who has crème fraiche in the fridge, ready and waiting, just in case? So, I hunted around and found all the ingredients I needed to make beef olive (marked-down sirloin found in the freezer) with red wine jus (pity, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices), stuffed courgettes (just mushrooms, scallions, mozzarella and black pepper), potatoes dauphinois (just saved the salad potatoes from going over, picking off the eyes and slicing with onions, stock and butter), and then I knocked up 2 litres of 9 veg minestrone (carrot, leek, onion, turnip, mushrooom, tomato, green bean, cabbage, all found in the fridge drawer with some peas from the freezer).

For lunch I made chopped cherry tomatoes drizzled with hot garlic butter and a courgette, scallion, mushroom, and mozzarella fritter (left over from the stuffed courgette for dinner) and served on buttered toast (it was delicious).

All that creating and cooking got me thinking about how important food is in our culture, particularly language. Phrases based around cooking are bounced around all the time, often used to describe a problem or difficulty: In a jam - In a pickle - In a stew. I wonder why? Why not: In a marmalade – In a mustard – In a casserole? And then there’s those terms that we use when we are feeling hot: I’m roasting - It’s boiling - I’m as warm as toast - It’s like an oven in here. And those other cooking related phrases: Dropped like a baked potato – Given a grilling – Salad days. I wonder if it was a cook who started them off?

I expect I’ll never know though; after all I’m treated just like a mushroom – kept in the dark and covered in shit, and besides as everyone knows, I’m one sandwich short of a picnic.

Break over - back to the hot stove and the washing up.

Last night's dream...

2012-02-04T17:53:00.005Z

And the children played merrily in the street, rolling hoops and jousting with brooms, young boys straddling barrels rolled in the dirt, others leapt in the air or played leapfrog with their companions. Death had been defeated. The king smiled and watched with joy from behind the darkened window of his grand town house. No longer was there reason to despair, his people were happy and well once more.

Death and his minions had been driven from the Kingdom. The king was content.

Across the courtyard the sad faced clown gazed emptily down from the window of the stable. On the street below his followers moved slowly through the crowds, the dwarf leading the sickness, the cloth held reverently in his gnarled hands. A yellow napkin covered his misshapen head making him indistinguishable from the children around him. The plagues followed in their disguises of brown, blue, still more blue, they were ready for the game and they knew the game well, they had played it many times before. There was no beating them and they were bound to win.

Death smiled his white and sad faced smile and began to count; he had work ahead of him.

As the cock crowed the king looked down on a street made empty of games and a kingdom made empty of joy, he would play alone, play alone forever.

Say nothing...

2012-02-03T19:40:00.006Z

Okay Friday night. Some might say TGIF, others TFIF. I just say nothing.

Empty headedness isn’t an insult it’s a blessing. Thoughts spin around and around in my mind, sparking off each other to create new and other thoughts, making my head so full that sometimes I want to scream – and I do. Other times I want to pull my hair out – and I do that too. It’s worse in the mornings. Mornings bring thought on thought, worry on worry, stack upon stack of concern and despair until it makes me spring out of bed, wobbly and dazed, just to stop the murmuring in my head.

Well, at least I recognise it and that they are there.

If I try hard I can control it. I can make the wall in my mind black and then start playing the movie, starting with my islands and moving on to wherever my freedom takes me. A bird, a fish, the wind, a leaf, a shooting star, a fox, a stone buried deep in the ground, or floating in my bed.

Relaxation; how I crave it. Peace; how I need it.

I don’t care if I never do a party again, but a quiet night, quiet of the night?

Okay Friday. Some might say TGIF, others TFIF. I just say nothing.

A twat of Traffic wardens...

2012-02-02T20:33:00.004Z

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. Well, I would if there were any but at the moment it’s freezing. Yes, we’re back to that, the staple of all English conversations – and a blog posting phenomenon; the weather. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve turned to the weather when all else has failed. It must be a few at least, a few dozen at least, dozens and dozens at least. Scores even.

Dozens, scores, baker’s thingies and other odd numerical collectives - now there has be a post in that. I could even manipulate it to go on to talk about animal collective nouns – an ambush (tigers), a ballet (swans), a bloat (hippos), a deceit (lapwings), a twat (traffic wardens). Not today though – by the way I was joking about the twat of traffic wardens. It was just a linking device.

Which brings me to the subject of the day; my poor mother-in-law again and the wrangles she seems to constantly get herself into.

So what’s she been up to this time?

Illegal parking.
Illegal parking?

Yes, illegal parking.

Here’s the whole, sad, silly, sorry tale.

My mother in law, driver of a black Ford, registration MD53 **X was issued with a parking ticket on 30/01/2012 by CEO TR341 (in other words a traffic twatter). She’s 82 and disabled with all sorts of ailments to do with feet, legs, eyes, ears – sometimes the list seems endless. At 2.35 precisely she very, very carefully parked in Regent Road car park, Altrincham, in a disabled parking space and, as she was rushing to get to an appointment with her optician, set the time on her disabled sticker to 3.35 instead of 2.35 in error. Now, it could have been the rushing around, her trembling hands, her eyes, or simply her failing memory and general loss of some sense of reality, but whatever it was it was a genuine mistake - unless it was time travel again.

At 14.44 she was issued with a ticket for reason 87 (yes, reason 87) which is: Parking in a designated disabled person’s parking place without a valid person’s badge in the prescribed manner. Now, my mother-in-law is a genuine disable person (not one of those other ones you see running from their cars doing handstands as they go) and therefore allowed to park in a designated disabled person’s space, she wasn’t without a valid person’s badge and she did display it clearly, the only error she made was a mistake over the time. I assume that this is the prescribed manner the ticket refers to.

On her return to her car at around 3.30 she was very upset to find she had a ticket but sent a cheque off within the hour as (and I quote). “I felt stupid and didn’t want to get into any more trouble and have to pay double as it’s £70. I feel really stupid’. Now in the trade we call that ‘Old ladies and authority syndrome’ and there seems to be no cure.

In my view the only stupid thing she did was to pay up so quickly. If I’d heard about it before she’d paid I would have appealed at the time for ‘reason’s stated above’ - particularly as she was back so quickly and her act was in no way an attempt to get an extended parking period for free as the fine seems to implicitly imply. It was simply an old lady in a rush who made a mistake and who’s now worried about using her disabled badge at all.

Anyway, I’ve written a letter asking for the money to be returned to her. I always write a letter and after all she is a pensioner.

Q. So, why the doodle of that chap in a pith helmet with a jungle on the brim?

A. I think that the car parking authority is taking the pith.

Sorry.

End of...

2012-02-01T18:10:00.002Z

I haven’t blogged for a couple of days but I can’t let today pass without putting out a few words.

Today is an anniversary; it was exactly a year ago today that I woke up jobless for the first time in my working life. A year - sometimes it seems like only yesterday and at other times a very, very, long time ago.

A year of change and remaining the same.
A year of learning and knowing nothing.
A year – and all in all a bad one.

Yes, I’ve learnt a few things about myself and others. I’ve learnt that when most people say they are going to do something they don’t, I’ve learnt that there’s a whole industry out there who really haven’t any manners or conscience at all, who don’t reply to e-mails or calls, who say they’ll call you back and don’t, who guarantee you all sorts of things and simply let you down. Frankly my dear, they don't give a shit.

It seems that trying to do your best, the right thing, being honest, trying to be helpful and looking on the bright side – well, it really isn’t worth it.

There, I said it would be a few words and already I’ve said too much. End of.

A penis on a desert island...

2012-01-29T17:20:00.011Z

Now I know that I go on, and on, about desert islands, and I know that I’ve written about this before, but it’s always worth a mention if only as an excuse to get to post this picture of Brigitte Bardot on location somewhere.

Today Desert Island Discs celebrated its 70th anniversary. Imagine that - a radio programme that was first broadcast 70 years ago is still going strong.

It was first broadcast on 29 January 1942, a few years after the outbreak of the Second World War and, as we are always reminded in the intro to the programme, was conceived and originally presented by Roy Plomley. The first guest was Vic Oliver, a fascinating Jewish comedian and entertainer from Austria who married Churchill’s daughter Sarah, much to her father’s consternation. He was on Hitler’s ‘Death List’, but not because of his bad jokes – he was actually pretty funny. I’ll blog him one day I guess.

Each week Roy asked a guest to choose eight songs, a book and luxury item for their imaginary stay on the island and discussed their lives and beliefs in the gaps between the music. At first it was scripted and the book and luxury element didn't actually come until later. Over the years 183 pianos, five trombones, the Albert Memorial and a cheeseburger machine have been taken as luxury items to the island. Morrisey considered choosing sleeping pills (Just in case he wanted to top himself. Well, what difference does it make?) but had to choose a bed instead, Ollie Reed chose a blow up doll and Brigitte Bardot chose happiness – which caused old Roy a few seconds of concern as it sounded like she was asking for "a penis".

I’ve listened for years; to Roy and Parkie, So Lonely and Kirstie. Hundreds of guests from the despicable Paul McCartney (who didn’t really chose all his own songs), the wonderful Bettie Driver, suicidal Morrisey, strange Anthony Burgess, brutally honest Kathy Burke, sad Hattie Jacques, sadder Kenneth Williams, but not the even sadder Tony Hancock – as I was only a few months old when he wandered onto his own particular desert island.

If you don’t listen to it then you should start.

‘A penis’ – I missed that one.

Well, that's that. I'll have my cup of tea and a biscuit now.

Not a Picasso...

2012-01-28T18:49:00.009Z

I think it incredible that anyone would even think about giving a woman two noses, let alone three breasts. But the other night, just as I was thinking of calling it a day and going to bed, that's just what happened to me. Opening my notepad I picked up my trusty pound shop felt tips and began scribbling away. It was almost the work of a moment, well about two minutes worth of moments, but when I had finished there in front of me in glorious feltpenicolor was my Pablo Picasso.

"Oh no! I'm having a Picasso attack!" Whatever that means.

All those years of looking at his paintings on the television and in books must have seeped into my mind because there's no escaping his influence in this doodle. And I'm not at all sure that whilst I was doodling it I didn't feel something or someone take hold of my pen and do my scribbling for me. Mind you that could just as easily be my mind playing tricks on me. He does that sometimes. Once he put a bowler hat on a fish and told me to smoke a pipe that wasn't a pipe at all.

Anyway, This is not a Picasso. Not that you needed telling. But he's in there somewhere. He's probably in all of us somewhere.

Bet he wishes he had some felt tips now.

Ooooooooh... it just won't doo you know...

2012-01-27T17:59:00.003Z

Ooooooooh... it just won't doo you know...

That’s my new catchphrase; everybody needs one, and back in the golden age of comedy (whenever that was) everybody had one and some still do – well not exactly catchphrases but - it's good but it's not right

Can ‘yer tell what it is yet? Well actually it’s a catchphrase.

Hello playmates! A catchphrase (or catch-phrase) is a phrase or expression - ooo err missus - recognized by its repeated utterance - listen very carefully, I shall say this only once. Such phrases often originate in popular culture - ere, stop messin’ about - and in the arts - can yer tell what it is yet?. Some are educational - Bend over, Wendover! - and others typically posed a question - is it ‘cos I is black or is it because I’m the only gay in the village? - and spread (I say, Ding dong) through a variety of mass media (such as literature and publishing, motion pictures, television and radio - please do not adjust your set), as well as word of mouth and it’s all done in the best possible taste.

Some become the de facto - they don’t like it up ‘em - "trademark" or "signature" of the person or character with whom they originated, well, a man’s only as old as the woman he feels, silly boy, and can be instrumental in the typecasting (beneficially or otherwise), but am I bovvered, of a particular actor. I don’t believe it!

It’s all a bit swinging… dodgy really. Some Catchphrases are near the knuckle, or rather my arse, and others are instructional – calm down. Some tell you something of import - this is a local shop – and others can be a warning –don’t mention the war.

Still with me? Well, look at me when I'm talking to you!

And now for something completely different

Hello playmates! Can you hear me mother? You lucky people. I have a cunning plan. I’m free. You rotten swine you. You're my wife now! Just like that!

Anyway, nice to see you, to see you ... nice! I thank you and it's goodnight from me, and it's goodnight from him.

Nike, FCUK, Rolling Stones...

2012-01-26T20:51:00.003Z

How was my day?

In the words of the Beatles: just another day. I never knew I led such an exciting life until I didn't.

I used to work in advertising. Doesn’t that sound glamorous? Of course the advertising that I worked in for most of my life wasn’t very glamorous at all. Directories are directories and can be quite mundane, but looking back on it now and compared to what has been my life since, it was pretty exciting most of the time.

Shame it had to change, but then its just another symptom of the way technology is changing the way we receive our advertising information. I’m not going to go into the wibbley-wobbley-web thing or viral videos but my belief is that anything nice and tangible (like paper) has been on its outway for a while now (nice new word invented there).

Today advertising is all about hard data, gathered and analysed and kicked out as stats, with hardly a Toulouse Lautrec in sight.

So much data is collected these days that in general you can get it to read any way you like - and if it doesn't read that way then just keep collecting until it does. Supermarkets target us based around buying patterns taken from loyalty cards, and companies push advertising after sneaking a look at where you’ve been surfing or what comment you made on that blog you were reading.

And no... I’m not going to go down the Big Brother cul-de-sac.

Advertising used to be so clean. How I loved those grimy posters that were stuck up everywhere, and the wind-torn billboards, and the glossy ads in magazines, and dirty hand-making newspapers (good for only a day) and good old yellow pages (good for a year).

Particularly good old yellow pages.

How long before they are all crumpled memories I wonder, like enamel signs and neon lights - all replaced by high tech alternatives? How soon before all advertising is either uploaded on hand held screens or holograms projected into the very streets that we walk along and we become just extras in someone else’s commercial?

How long before consumer and product are indistinguishable, or are we there already as people become living mannequins for brand and hype? We can’t be far away from clothes that interact with the wibbley-wobbley-web – And will we get free T-shirts as long as we click the ‘allow advertising button’ button – And will that make us all sandwich board hawkers, or are we that already – Nike, FCUK, Rolling Stones?

Natural communism...

2012-01-25T18:09:00.007Z

Looks like the world is heading for economic meltdown if the newsmen and politicians are to be believed. Well, it’s hardly surprising is it? Not that I believe the newsmen or politicians any more than I believe the bankers and businessmen or the ancient Mayans come to that… although thinking about it the Mayans are probably closer to the truth than the rest.

Yes, the world is in turmoil and those of us who are used to having so much are beginning to understand what it is like not to have quite as much as before – just like most of the world always has.

The Western rich are no longer getting richer, or so it seems. The western rich seem to be getting poorer - tut-tut.

Yes, poverty is a great leveller. Not that the West is in poverty yet, but the rest of the world, the ones that have always known poverty, just might be getting a teeny bit wealthier - tut-tut, how awful.

Perhaps there is a balancing beginning where even the poorest nations might have a little more. It’s certainly happening in China and India, even in some parts of Africa. For the first time these people can afford meat and grain, expect to travel, maybe even own a car or a mobile phone, be educated, even pay for medicine to stay alive. My God (you know the bible one), just what is the world coming to?

Well, looks like the world is coming to the end of its tether.

Look’s like the world just doesn’t have enough to go around any more.

Looks like the world’s resources don’t only belong to the West as the West had always assumed.

Looks like the world’s resources belong to the world – and there really (yes really, not just a documentary) isn’t enough to go around.

I like to think of it as natural communism. A sharing of the world’s resources simply because those that couldn’t now can. Not that I like it, because I don’t - it's not what I am used to and it's scary. I think it’s going to be a big change for all of us who have been so comfortable for so long - but you can’t keep the world from turning (unless you are Michael Rennie and have a big silver robot called Gort).

As more and more people can the world’s resources need to stretch further and further, meaning less for those that have had and more for those who have had not – if you get my italicised drift.

Perhaps it’s the start of a new golden age where everyone has pretty much the same and we all live in almost-enough harmony.

Yeah right. It’s more likely to be like living in the middle ages - war, famine, pestilence and candles (if you can afford the tallow to make them), or maybe even worse (Kaboom!).

Yes, I wonder what the USA will make of things when democracy is dead and natural communism rules… and I wonder how they’ll deal with it?

Little x...

2012-01-24T18:16:00.009Z

'You know little x, the world is a book, and those who do not travel see only one page'.

How beautifully, simply true.

This strange and wonderful object was bid for and won on e-bay by a new customer of mine. It's a perfect and beautifully made crystal glass globe, about 4.5 inches in diameter and heavy, so heavy. Just right to hold in the palm of your hand. A world in the palm of your hand.

It stands on a square faceted crystal base with a hollow on the top so that the world can gently spin in its smooth glass axis. It's really beautifully made; all the continents of the world etched onto its surface, longitude and latitude engraved around its pure glass surface as it gently spins, and spins, and spins.

He won it for a tenner.
I covet it.

He came to me with a request I was loath to comply with. He wanted the words at the top of this page painted on this magnificent globe's surface and blue shoots springing from the words.

I asked why.

'A special gift.' He simply said.

Reluctantly I did as he asked, carefully spiralling the letters around the globe, painting shooting leaves with iridescent blues, doing my best, and pulling it off almost to my satisfaction. The baking was a nervous time. I didn't want it to crack in my kiln, and when it came out it remained warm for hours.

A warm world in the palm of my hand.

It didn't crack and I don't want to part with it.
He's coming for it Thursday.

'The world is a book, and those who do not travel see only one page'... perhaps I'll run off with little x and go missing, looking for all those pages I've never seen and taking the glass globe with me.

Should we run?
What do you say little x?

Just a little thought on war...

2012-01-23T18:49:00.008Z

I've been researching the Second World War recently. Not for fun (although it is) but because I've been doing some blog writing for a few blogs other than my own.

Anyway, a thought has been niggling away at me for a while now and it kind of fruited when I read the blog post of a friend of mine this morning. He visited the Imperial War Museum at the weekend and as always it got him thinking.

Well, his thinking got me thinking, so I responded to his post.

I often wonder how today's people, yes us (adults and children) would cope with the change and disruption of something akin to either the First or Second World Wars. They touched everyone regardless of age, colour, religion, or social standing in a way nothing before or since could, did, or has. What must it have been like to be an evacuated child separated for years from family, a soldier in the trenches suffering from shell-shock, a wounded solider on the beaches in a time when penicillin was in short supply, or a woman volunteer manning the barrage balloons as pieces of a damaged doodlebug rained down around you?

Everyone in the country caught up in a tangle.

I know that this may sound awful but car bombs and even the twin towers are almost nothing in comparison. They only graze us as they pass through our TV screens and don't really touch our lives unless we are one of the unlucky few.

Let's hope that it is ever so.

Butterfly heart...

2012-01-22T18:29:00.005Z

Only the doodle is mine tonight. The words, and wonderful words they are, belong to my 17 year old daughter, Holly. A talent already and something special in the making methinks - but then I would say that wouldn't I.

Have a read and see what you think, feel free to be honest - most of you are so discerning - and then let me know.

I only hope that the doodle lives up to her fantastic words.

Trust me. This ain't no teenage drivel.

------------------------

Butterfly heart.

Out of every inch of my body, the butterflies flew out. They swirled around me, the epitome of hope and freedom and peace. And I knew in that moment, that I had set myself free. Finally.

They had survived. I had survived. And now, they were here to help me, to lift me up in their flight, to save me. They forgave me, for every one of their sisters I had killed, for every broken promise. They forgave me when I could not. Their forgiveness was clear now, for all to see, it could not be denied, I could not be denied, and they were safe, I was safe. It was over, forever. I hope.

The first day the butterflies came to me was, perhaps, the first day I saw recovery. I thought I was going to die, and they knew that, they came to me in their hundreds, delicately encasing themselves in my body, trapping themselves by their own will for my safety, recovery, and hope. Where I was selfish, they were selfless and many of them sacrificed themselves for me. I cut them open one by one, until I feared there was none left, again I feared I would die, but their delicate hum kept my heart beating, it was as fragile as two butterfly wings desperately beating in a storm. I was the storm, and the butterflies couldn’t escape me, until I had escaped myself.

The delicate life inside me, longed for escape, for freedom. I would not allow it. Determined, I punished myself, day in and day out, never lapsing, never ending. I was a tower of strength, yet an empty shell, nothing but the butterflies to hold me up. And they did. No matter my crime, they never let me down, never gave up on me, where so many had, where I wished they would. How I wanted to collapse into the air, and be weighed down by the grit. I deserved it, didn’t I? Yet, not once did they let me, not once. They forced me to keep going, they were not weak, and they would not let me win.

It baffled me, how such delicate creatures could be so strong, when I, a million times their body weight, was fragile and falling apart. They carried me, when I could not carry myself and showed me how to function. They allowed me to carry on as normal, to fake a smile, a bounce in my step, everything anyone expected, I could do. I was a fake though, because that wasn’t me, all along it was the butterflies. I owed them so much, they were saving me. I owed them their lives.

It was inevitable that one day I would have to set them free, for neither of us could carry on like this. They were becoming weak. It was my turn to save them, I had gone on too long relying on them, I had killed too many of their sisters, I had to redeem myself; I had to be strong again. It wasn’t easy, I won’t pretend it was. Many times, I failed them, and they allowed me to. They didn’t hold it against me, they gave me the grace to try again. Try and try I did. I learnt, slowly, to focus not on the turmoil of myself, but of the delicate beating of my heart, of the butterfly wings, and slowly I became calm. When that didn’t work, I learnt to draw the butterflies all over me, so I could see my saviours, so I would have to watch myself kill them, so it was real. The guilt would be too much, and I would watch the butterflies move around my body instead. Soon, the pain became less and less, until it had gone away altogether, almost. The butterflies sensed this, they saw me becoming strong and they knew I could hold myself up.

So, we’re back here. With the butterflies, ripping me open, and filling me with life, as they fly away. They’re not abandoning me, I know, they’ll be back as soon as I need them, should I ever. I’m determined I won’t, to show them ultimate gratitude and stay fixed. I’m strong now. One by one, they fly out of my window, into the real world. Free, brave and full of hope. I know I must follow them. I know it’s time to live. They saved my life and now it is mine to live.

Yet one butterfly remains, delicately beating. The wings are keeping my body alive; my heart.

Three runes...

2012-01-20T17:58:00.005Z

A Wiccan friend of mine cast the runes for me this morning.

Three runes picked by a maiden moon. I've taken them to my island and made them on my beach, a standard for all to see, a solid shout of me.

Isa - Ice only appears to stop a river’s flow – my Overview
Ansuz - Find your ears before you search for words – my Challenge
Ehwaz - The mind will trust the body, the body will trust the mind – my Action

I think that I understand. It certainly rings true. And this, my mantra: As I develop my own culture, all else follows.

'Do as you will. Make it continue, have faith and all else will follow.' Good advice I think.

Rune chant

Me mine
Cast clean
Darkling sticks
Tell truth
Never for me
To misunderstand
Nor rue
Your rune song

Isa
Ice cleared
Make mine mind
Reinforced
With runed resolve
Thwart not me
To trickery or guile
Nor lay me

Ansuz
Inspired of Odin
Clear eyed
All seeing seer
Signal well my speech
Fill me clean
Unblack my back
Unbore my dark delusion
Vain me never with revealed manipulation

Ehwaz
Twin steeds
Carry me
Steadily on
Not stumbled
Foul footed
To rush to change I crave
Reckless in my haste to run

Me mine
Cast clean
Darkling sticks
Tell truth
Never for me
To misunderstand
Nor rue
Your rune song

Letting the dogs out...

2012-01-19T17:35:00.000Z

It’s been a while since I got to a beach, a long while and I don’t know when I’ll get to go again. Seems I’m a bit stuck at the moment, my life going around and around in the same old groove, except it doesn’t feel very much like a groove at all; there’s not really any groove to it. I’m not quite in a rut yet, but I think I can see one hiding in the distance, just waiting for me to get stuck in it.

So, to the beach - the thing I miss most about the beach is opportunity. You never know just what you are going to find and I miss my beach creatures you see. Oh, I know they are all still there a-waiting, hiding in the wash-up waiting to be released, but without me just who’s going to release them?

Yes, I miss my beach creatures.

I’ve started to look longingly at the kitchen bin. Well, bins and bags and buckets really – we have to separate our rubbish into any number of exciting recycling modes. I’ve started to wonder what I might make from the cans and boxes, bags and bottles, bread and peelings that we throw away each week. Could I find a creature in the bin I wonder?

Probably; there’s always something lurking beneath the surface.

I’ve even taken to looking in the shoe cupboard. Could there be a something hiding amongst all those shoes and slippers and boots, flip-flops, sandals and clogs? I’m sure that there must be; a shoe dragon or boot monster patiently waiting for footwear release.

Ah, the joys of discarded ephemera and bits of old clothing.

I came across this on the web the other day, a chap that makes all sorts of fantastic things out of rubbish. David Kemp lives and works on the far western coast of Cornwall among the old mine workings near Botallack. He finds the material for his work in junk and then makes that tat into whimsical sculptures.

The hounds of Geevor, or "cannus stannus geevoritii", as David calls them, are a pack of underground dogs. Each hound is made from three and a half pairs of Wellington boots, discarded by the miners when the local tin mine closed down ending a four thousand year history of tin mining in West Penwith.

Four thousand years, almost a lifetime, and at the end of it all that was left was a pile of rubber boots. Well, at least someone saw the potential in them, saving the boots from landfill and letting the dogs out. Brilliant, simply barking brilliant - if I can get hold of enough old wellies I might try and make one myself.

In the meantime… maybe I can find something hiding at the back of the pan cupboard.

On your bike…

2012-01-18T18:51:00.006Z

When I was a kid everybody had a bike. My mum had a bike, my dad had a bike, all of my aunts and uncles had bikes, even my gran had a bike. All the kids in the road had bikes, stickered and flagged with bells and honkers.The butcher had a bike, the baker had a bike - even the candlestick maker (if there had been one) would have had a bike I expect.

Policemen rode bikes, newspapers were delivered by boys on bikes, midwives almost delivered babies on bikes. Of course postmen rode bikes as they do still, but back then they delivered huge parcels by balancing them on wooden board platforms placed on frames in front of the handlebars.

We never actually had our coal delivered by bike, but the paraffin man delivered the paraffin by bike and the meter reader made his rounds by bike.

The vicar rode a bike, the stationmaster rode a bike, even old mad Annie rode a bike, singing her head off as she rode around town in a dirty pink slip and a straw hat decorated with flowers.

Danny Dustbin, the rag man, rode a bike with a trailer, knocking on doors and carting away bits of rusty metal, broken radios and even bones. Occasionally the knife grinder would turn up on his specially adapted bike, engaging a second chain and pedalling away, driving his grinding wheel and sharpening the knitting scissors.

Mrs Mathews, my teacher, rode a bike to school, and Nappy, the gravedigger and child molester, rode a bike to the churchyard, balancing his spade along the crossbar and whistling hymns for those in peril on the sea.

The vet had a bike, Dr. Beer had a bike (although I never saw him riding it), Sadie the barmaid at the Brewers had a top-heavy bike, Jolly Jack (of Jolly Sailor fame - shut that door!) had a bike, even old Mr. Crumpet, who’d fought in the Great War and was always more than happy to tell you all about trench-foot, had a bike.

Some people (the posh ones) had two bikes – one for the weekdays and a Sunday bike to cycle to church on. The Harrington spinsters had bikes, tricycles with sun hoods in the summer, and sometimes, in the spring, you’d see visitors in shorts riding along the high street on tandems, and once I think I saw three Oxford chaps on a bicycle made for three all dressed in white trousers and college caps.

Yes, everyone and anyone had a bike in the heady days of my sunlit childhood.

Except me.

I never had a bike, never rode one, I never wanted to - part fear and part total disinterest. Oh, I could have had one; my dad would have bought me a bike in a moment, and my uncle Bob would probably have made me one, stripping the parts from old wreckers from the tip and painting it up with spray cans bought from Plater’s the corn merchants. Uncle Charlie (God bless him) would have ‘found’ me a bike and I could have borrowed a bike from the Braham boys, who had six or seven each.

But I didn't want one.

For years I was a figure of fun; pointed at, whispered and giggled about, taunted: “He can’t even ride a bike you know.”

And I couldn’t.

Years later I did learn to ride a bike after a fashion, but back then I was a non-biker in a world where everyone rode a bike.

How times change. These days’ bikes seem to be ridden mainly by men wearing lycra shorts, streamlined helmets and ‘I am the fly’ sunglasses. The country roads are awash with packs of three-abreast Mafiosi cyclists on Sunday mornings, and through the week they arrogantly weave in and out of the city traffic, ignoring red lights and popping onto the pavement whenever there’s an obstacle.

The hordes of bicycle riding children I remember from my childhood years and youth are no more, and hardly a child seems to be out peddling along the street even on the warmest summer evening.

I’m no longer an oddity. Lots of people no longer ride bikes - scrub that - most people no longer ride bikes, and children have given up cycling in favour of their gaming consoles where they still ride bikes - but virtually.

Only people who set out to ride bikes, ride bikes; they aren’t transport, they aren’t delivery, they’re no longer a necessity.

Pity really.

A question of coleslaw…

2012-01-17T18:51:00.005Z

When I heard that Antony Worall Thompson had been arrested for shoplifting last week I wasn’t at all surprised. After all a man who doodles a twirling time-tunnel psychedelic carrot for charity, colouring it in with fluorescent marker, and then having to re-examine his spelling, can’t be all there can he?

All where?
There, you know.
Where there?
There.
Ah, there! Did he just slip something in his pocket?

I bid for this doodle on e-bay a few years back. Each March a whole bunch of pen-and-pencilled-up celebrities auction off their doodles for the epilepsy charity and I was lucky enough to get AWT’s carrot, plus a very fine signature, for around fifteen pounds or so. Of course if it had been on display in Tesco I could probably have simply slipped it into my pocket and slowly, so as not to cause any suspicion, walked away - but it wasn’t, so I couldn’t.

No, instead I bought my doodle in good faith and now (shock, horror) I find that my doodler is a thief who (if his appearance on TV last Sunday is to be believed) was sent away to boarding school at three, sexually abused, and has been undergoing psychotherapy for his ‘addiction’ - as he calls his petty thievery of cheeses and marked-down coleslaw.

How very outrageous! The nicking that is, not the abuse.

Mind you, watching him at the weekend I saw a very different man from the TV chef I’ve so disliked whenever I’ve watched him secreting his bumptious personality into my living room through the television screen. Good job that he can’t reach in through the telly, he might nick the remote and set it to repeat ‘Ready, Steady, Cook’ over and over ad infinitum.

Hell in a shopping-trolley.

Actually, I almost felt sorry for the obviously caught, confused, cook trying so hard to justify himself and failing, putting up with the tired jokes and jibes of the panel of jokers and satirists like the proverbial lamb (don’t forget the rosemary and fennel rub) to the slaughter.

Almost, but not quite.

Looking at his downcast eyes, the way his head hung, beard on chins, listening to his distracted mumbling excuses, I was sure I could see the old AWT beneath, the one that would have done it simply because he wanted to, because he could, and to slip the finger to everybody and everything, the angry AWT that we all know so well. The one that drew the jagged, over-bright, psychedelic carrot that hangs on my kitchen wall.

I’m sure that he’ll be back. But the question remains – Why?

Why a carrot?
Why a psychedelic one?
Why all those receding, diminishing, squares?
And just why is it drawn so very much off-centre to the page – because it is… very off-centre.

If I look closely can I see it’s the work of a sexually abused chef who was sent away to boarding school aged three and went on to become a shoplifter appearing on a comedy chat show as penance?

Maybe.

Perhaps I should put it up on e-bay, who knows AWT’s new infamy might increase its value, or maybe I should show it to his psychotherapist. Perhaps his doodle holds the answers – after all, they put carrots in coleslaw don’t they?

I'm not coming back...

2012-01-16T19:02:00.012Z

In a world called hypnotism there’s a place that I could take you that's called ‘your special place’. It’s a place that you can go to where everything is safe and calm, where nobody wants or needs anything from you, and where you can go to whenever you want and it is safe for you to do (so not when you are driving or using a chain saw).

It can be anything and anywhere that you want; a cosy room, a forest glade, a beach, a place from your past or somewhere from your imagination – it’s up to you, it is your special place, a place of peace and relaxation.

It’s taken me a while to find my special place. At first it was a clearing in a small wood, dark and lush, a mossy pool at its centre surrounded by reeds. The sunlight dappled through the leaves overhead and in the distance I could hear the sea lapping on the shore of a sunlit beach.

Then it was the beach for a while. A sandy beach littered with seashells and interesting pieces of driftwood. Only the best quality flotsam and jetsam washed up on my special beach; glass net floats, ancient glass bottles, long thin seed pods from the West Indies, huge pine cones and thick bamboo canes from China. Yes, my special beach - the perfect beach sculpture beach.

And then I had a 'free association'' revelation.

It wasn’t the glade and it wasn’t the beach, but the island that they were on. My own special island and I’m drifting towards it in a boat.

I can smell the saltiness of the sea. I can hear the seagulls calling to one another, right up high. Sometimes it is warm and sunny, and sometimes it’s rough and windy. The sea is a deep sparkling blue... No, the sea is a grey and cold, the waves riding up high above me.

And in the waves go, and then out again. Over and over. In and then out, in and then out, all day long, and all night long, the waves on the sea wash in and out. Just as my breath goes into my body, and then slowly out again, over and over.

And over and over. My boat on the sea - just drifting, drifting, drifting...

Yes, you've read this before and recently, well almost.

Of course I’ll never get to my island. I’m not allowed. That isn’t my destiny. If I were to arrive on my island they’d be no going back, I’d stay - happy from dawn ‘til dusk just doing whatever I wanted, needed to, and at night I’d sleep through torrential rain, hurricane winds, light scented breeze, or lie on the sand and watch the shooting stars falling into the sea with a well-imagined splash.

No, I’d never come back - never - not ever, ever.

And that is why I never can go there.

Not much to write home about...

2012-01-15T18:42:00.007Z

My blogging is becoming very patchy. Sometimes I post and sometimes I don't and I wonder if anyone really notices except me.

I always know when I don't post my daily letter to myself, though.

That's what they are really: letters to myself. Snapshots in my time detailing every nuance of how I'm feeling and not feeling. well, not every nuance but most, although they are often written in my own cryptic code - so cryptic that I wonder if in years to come even I will remember them.

Of course it isn't all there. It is an edited version, only revealing what I consider to be acceptable for my audience's pallet. Yes, it really is edited, oh the the truth is there but it's hiding in the shadows.

Yes my blog is patchy these days. Well, I haven't much to shout about, and time is scarce, and more and more I'd rather have my bed than my keypad, and inspiration seems to be a dimming thing and the most enlightening thought that I have had this week is a remark about scattering my ashes handful by handful all over the town where I grew up in.

'And when I pass away I'd like my ashes scattered in Thame - in the river, the churchyard, at the grammar school, the cricket pitch, the bus stop at the town hall, the Six Bells car park, KingsClose, Wellington street - little piles of me all over the place. I hope that someone will do it for me.'

There you go. My letter for today. Job done - and there's the rub.

Not much to write home about is it? Particularly not to my home.

Incident Number 0155 11/01/12

2012-01-13T19:08:00.003Z

I've not blogged for a few days. I've been busy dealing with the mess, both physical and emotional left by the police trying to break my mother-in-laws front door down. Today I wrote to the Civil Litigation Unit seeking recompense. Here's my letter - the bold bits have been added afterwards.

Further to my telephone conversation of this morning I am writing as requested to request payment (demand) for damage caused to my mother-in-laws front door by two of your officers (thugs).

In the early hours of Wednesday morning (I was proceeding down the avenue...) two of your policemen (monkeys) tried forcing entry (smashing into) into my mother-in-law’s house through the front door with a crowbar causing damage (destroying) to the frame and glass.

My mother-in-law had left her living room light on (Call the police! Oh, somebody did already) and a neighbour (nosey, meddling bitch of a neighbour) decided that she should call an ambulance, and subsequently the police, after convincing her (mental) self that my mother-in-law had had some sort of accident or was unwell in the house (or had possibly been abducted by aliens).

To the contrary though, my mother-in-law was actually (tucked up sound and warm) in bed asleep and had taken her hearing aid out as people do when they go to bed (to prevent it slipping into her ear and piercing her brain) (she is very hard of hearing). So there was nothing wrong at all apart from a single light which she had forgotten to turn off (did I already say call the police?) - as most of us do from time to time (usually without the police battering your door down).

My mother in law s old (ancient) (82) but mobile, alert, and in touch with us daily (and not by ouija board). Her neighbour (the one who called the police) (the stupid bitch who called the police) saw (was spying on her) her at 10.30pm putting out the bins so she knew she was okay at this time. Apart from saying hello (smiling inanely) in passing she doesn’t really know anything (jack shit)) about my mother in law including any health issues, and obviously didn’t know that she has hearing problems (but we all know about the neighbours delusions of grandeur issues).

With this in mind, and given that my mother-in-law had not complained to her or anyone else of feeling ill or given her any cause for concern (she did leave a light on though), I find it hard to understand (friggin' gobsmacked) just why she called out the emergency services (panicky, stupid, nosey old curtain twitcher) . Oddly though she seems to watch my mother-in-laws movements (spies on her), she saw her putting her bins out and later that my mother-in-law’s light was on (yes, she spies on her). This wasn’t the first time either, on another occasion she mentioned to my mother-in-law (who sometimes has problems sleeping) that her light was on very late (a crime punishable by death I expect) and that she had almost called the police as a result (yes she's mad, quite mad)).

At some time before 1.30 the neighbour tried knocking at my mother-in-law’s door (rushing around, crying, pulling her hair out) but didn’t get a reply as she was asleep (well it was the early hours) (not that she would have answered anyway at that time of night for security reasons) (and just in case a mad neighbour kills her). Soon after the neighbour called out the emergency services ‘just in case’ (Yes, that's what she said 'just in case') my mother in law had had an accident (she could just picture it. My mother-in -law dead on the carpet after lipping on a banana skin). The ambulance men told her that they couldn’t break (because they aren't stupid) in so she then called the police (who were stupid) at around fourteen minutes past two. Two officers arrived shortly after and proceeded to try to jemmy the door with a crowbar (that they just happened to be carrying) managing to smash the corner of the door and frame, and crack the leaded stained glass insert in the process (well done boys).

As far as we can ascertain from other neighbours your officers did not (didn't bother) to try to check with them about my mother-in-law (some of them are aware of her hearing problems and would have realised the situation) and simply acted upon the (mad) imaginings of this single neighbour.

Apparently your officers tried the bell and shouted (just like hooligans might) through the letter box and went around the back of the house (like thieves), but as I’ve said my mother-in-law was asleep in bed without her hearing aid. (Mind you, if she had heard them she wouldn’t have answered the door anyway as she would have been too terrified, and we have asked her not to open the door to strangers particularly at night).

Eventually though the noise of your officers trying to break her front door (smashing at it and kicking it) down did wake her. Initially she thought it was someone trying to break in to her house and was too frightened (physically sick actually) to come down the stairs. It wasn’t until she heard the voice of her hysterical (crazy bitch of a) neighbour calling her that she came to the door.

Your officers took her name, age, next of kin, and doctor’s name (why they needed this is a mystery). They did not leave an incident number or their names and when my mother-in-law asked them about the damage to the door they simply said that they were on a routine call (yeah right, I think by this time they realised they'd been very silly boys), inferring that it was up to her to sort it out (and getting their piggy arses out of their as quickly as possible). They did not offer the address or contact number of the civil litigation group as (as I was told they are bound to do) they should have done. They just left without further explanation, leaving my mother-in-law confused, distressed, and feeling as though she had done something wrong when all she had done was forget to turn a light out (and crying , and shivering, and trying to deal with her mad, hysterical neighbour).

My wife and I went to Altrincham police station the following morning to find out how to proceed and register our dissatisfaction (understatement) with the way the incident had been handled (bungled). I asked the officer on the desk who would pay for the door and she said that the police would (yes, that is what she said). She also said there was no mention of any damage to the door in the report (I wonder why?).

I subsequently spoke to PS 15984 Dave (the dick) Birchall that evening and he confirmed his view that he was answering a routine call (well, he would do wouldn't he) - he was quite condescending in my view (actually he was a defensive arrogant, rude, pig).

Of course I am not disputing that there might have been something amiss, but given that this neighbour had seen my mother-in-law only a few hours earlier, only had a left-on-light as evidence of anything untoward, doesn’t know my mother-in-law (or Jack Shit) well enough to know that she is very hard of hearing (almost deaf, poor love. Not that she admits it), and that your officers didn’t check with any other neighbours (too busy being police warriors), I think that they acted a little hastily (like the Keystone Kops they are).

Yes, as PS 15984 Dave Birchall, in my rather frustrating conversation (actually really, really, annoying) with him continually repeated, I do understand that it might have been a different story if there had have been a problem – but there wasn’t (nope, just one small light bulb left burning). The door was damaged needlessly (destroyed) and my mother-in-law embarrassed, upset and made to feel stupid (not to mention terrified) simply because of the over active imagination (mad, paranoid, fantasies) of a neighbour she hardly knows and a light which she forgot to turn off.

Generally, I really am at a loss to understand (another understatement) the actions of your officers or why they left my mother-in-law without any information on who they were or what to do next (actually I think this one is obvious). Maybe they should have asked a few more questions of the neighbour (like - Are you mad? have you done this sort of thing before? What are the voices saying now?). At the very least they should have done more to inform my mother-in-law of what she should do next and he rights concerning the damaged door (perhaps they were simply forgetful - not).

It seems to me that they just tried forcing her door on the say so of a single overly-nervous (nutty) neighbour in the early hours of the morning, failed, then just left without any further explanation ('Lets get out of here. We just screwed up bud'). If she didn’t have any family to help her sort this out, she’d simply be left with a damaged door and no recourse for action (and that is what those two were hoping for).

As it is she is now worried about turning the lights on or even leaving her curtains closed in the mornings in case her neighbour overreacts (that's how mad all the people in the road think her to be) again.

As I said, she’d like to claim for the damage to the door please (£800). I’d also like to know why your officers were so remiss in their duty (apart from them being thoughtless, bumbling, cowards) in informing and giving the relevant information to my mother-in-law.

Yours sincerely (very),

We'll see - I may write an article for Take-a-Break.

Fran, the ledge, and sailing away…

2012-01-10T18:34:00.008Z

I thought I knew exactly what I was going to write today but things happen, changing everything, tumblers clunking into place; and at once another door opens, shuts before you, or closes behind you.

Well known restaurant owners disappear, things become suitably camouflaged, trains are caught.

It’s behind you.

There are people who say that everything happens for a reason. Who knows; they may even believe it. Personally though, I don’t sign up to that. I (on the other hand) think that everything is pretty much random, happening to us because it can and not because there is some plan. No, if there is a Supreme-Being working it all out somewhere then he’s either over-promoted or sleeping off a skin-full in some great cosmic ditch.

But enough. There’s no way to camouflage bad news and today was a bad news day. Not my bad news exactly, but bad nevertheless and close enough to home to have its rippling impact. Bad enough to make me remember the ledge we’re all standing on. That ledge, the one that with the slightest change of breeze or tremble can so easily send us toppling off and over and out into whatever.

Never to return.

I heard of the death of an old colleague of mine today; Fran Weber, part of a past that for me has been gone for a while now, but still here in my mind. He finally fell off the ledge that he’d been standing on so bravely for so long.

Funny thing is I’d been thinking a lot about Fran recently, just wondering. Strange, because although I knew Fran as a colleague, I can’t say I knew him very well as a person. There from almost the start, I’d meet up with him when I went across to the US, but only as part of a group. Sometimes I didn’t see him at all. Sometimes I didn’t even seek him out. My loss - I know that now.

He left a big impact when I did meet up with him though. I spent a few days in Florida with Fran and some others once. We went to Cape Canaveral. I remember Fran laughing on the bus, telling jokes, exchanging tall tales. Fran was like that - big guy, big personality, big smile, and a victim of the big ‘C’.

My old friend Eric swore by Fran, seeing in him all the potential that proved to be so true. And Eric was a hard man to impress (I know, I never managed it), and yes, Eric’s opinion was good enough for me.

Looking at Fran the man, you’d never have known that he had cancer, at least I wouldn’t if I hadn’t have been told. He was one of those men that always seemed so well, on top of everything, so up for a joke or a beer, a golden boy in the best possible sense. A Pindar Guy if ever there was one - so much more than those others who sidled along after Pindar was no more. Old Eric would have cut off their toes and served them all for tea I think.

No, you’d never have known that Fran was up on that ledge with the rest of us, just waiting to fall, trying so hard not to - and closer to that edge than most. Some might have jumped. But not Fran, no I know that Fran would never have jumped.

Yes, if I was many miles from here I’d be sailing in an open boat on the sea. Instead I’m on this window ledge with the whole world below.

If you lie down in the boat, you can feel it bobbing up and down. Feel the sides going up and down as you lie there. And you can look up at the sky and see all the seagulls flying around up high, calling to one another.

You can hear the waves gently slapping against the side of the boat as you lie in the bottom of it, looking up at the sky. The boat gently swaying from side to side, a bit like you are being rocked. Rocked like a baby in a cradle, or maybe as though you’re in a hammock. Gently being rocked to sleep……

Goodbye Fran. Here’s hoping, that wherever you’re sailing to, they serve beer.

Flowers at the front…

2012-01-08T17:32:00.007Z

Not every word I carve on this page has to be torn from my heart, bleeding and spotting, filling my sight with red. I can be easier on myself. I can be easier on my self.

Not every word.

I can be.
Light
Flippant
Inane
Grammatically in correct

I can be.

And then there is home.
Where the heart is
Where there is no place like
Where the memories live
Where I sleep sound.

Home.
I can be home.
Home.

Taken there.
To Derrydown.
Or back to home town.

Standing outside old pubs
I drink.
Visiting my girlfriend’s houses
I remember.
Places where I used to work
I laugh.

Some of it different
Most of it the same.
I laugh.

Time travel.
Without travel.

Whoosh!
Standing besides my grandmother’s grave.
Whoosh!
Listening outside the forge to Grandad’s hammer.
Bang – bang – bang – bump – bumppp
Gone.

Whoosh!
Fleetwood.
Close to sea
A house outside.
Feelings inside.

A home.
Your own.
Such freedom

Such freedom.

Be happy.
With flowers at the front.

Flowers at the front.

Back then...

2012-01-07T18:40:00.008Z

Two sets of black and white contacts from the fifties. Sent to me by my aunt who, for some reason had kept them tucked away at a back of a draw probably. There I lay in the dark, mainly free from dust. Only coming out when somebody went rummaging for some sellotape or a birth certificate so that they could apply for a passport.

Look at me. How old am I? Two? Three?

Back then everyone went to the photographer to get a professional portrait taken. It was an expensive business and you had to save hard for it, forgoing tea, or bread, or meat, but it had to be done. It was expected.

Back then the photographer’s camera stood on a tripod and he stuck his head under a big black cloth, holding the needle trigger in his hand, shooting off shot after shot and trying to get the attention of his subject. And me? Well, I seem distracted by the headlights even then.

Just missed me.

Back then, hair combed, tears wiped away with some spit and hanky by mum. Mum in her best spotted dress and hat, smiling on. My Dad in the corner fuming, well I wouldn’t, couldn’t, behave. It was all too frightening. Tapping his pointy shoed toe, wanting to get away outside to have a fag.

I’m in here somewhere. I know I am. I can see it in my face. The start of the lines that would become oh so deeply etched with the passing of the years – my X face as I’ve come to call it. See my hands all wrinkly like an old man’s even then? Old man’s hands, far too much skin to firmly enclose the bones it slips across.

And that bear I’m holding. Was it mine? I don’t remember him. I don’t remember any bear to hold and hug. I must have had one, mustn’t I? He’s so shabby. A Mr. Shabby from Shabby Town – just like me.

Yes, I’m in here somewhere. Back then. In the beginning, as I am now. Startled and scared. For ever and ever? Well, no not that.

I’m in there somewhere though.

Yes, look. Here I am startled and scared. I wonder what it is I see? All the others aren’t me at all. Here I am - Mr (or should I say Master) Shabby, peeking out from behind the happy veneer made by the face pulling and waving of the photographer. Look at him, see his eyes?

And that other thing?

Well, that’s just a rip in the paper. The real scars don’t begin until later.

Kiss me - I may be a Prince...

2012-01-06T19:42:00.009Z

It's been kind of quiet in glass world since Christmas. I need to try to do something about it, but at least Valentine's day is just around the corner.

I'm making wine glasses, and flutes, and Love Monsters in the hope that someone will want to buy.

But today it's frogs - 'rivet, rivet'.

Yes, I've started making some of my jars for Valentine's. This time instead of pet dragons, or Christmas wishes, or 'losing my marbles' it's a frog Prince jar.

'Be my Prince', 'I love you - Croak!', 'Kiss me - I may be a Prince', 'For my Princess' - a little frog on a glass lilly pad surrounded by blues glass water, a heart and 'xx Big Kiss xx' on the lid.

All able to be personalised with your own message of course.

Silly but whimsical and I hope that you like them. I do.

Not only St. Trinians...

2012-01-04T19:13:00.008Z

I wouldn’t call Ronald Searle an early inspiration of mine exactly, but as I was growing up he was always there making me smile and titillating me on a Saturday afternoon at the flicks.

Well not him exactly, but one of his creations transferred onto celluloid.

Of course it wasn’t all St. Trinians. There was much more to Mr. Searle than that. But it wasn’t until years later that I recognised the incredible clarity and thoughtfulness in the way he swirled and scratched his ink on paper.

Cartoons?
Perhaps.
Draughtsmanship?
Clearly.
Detail?
Yes - and the Devil’s in it.

Apparently he felt the same, feeling that his body of work was far more than St. Trinians, a lot more. And of course he was right. But for most he will always be the man who drew those black and white drawings of scruffy little girls in straw-hatted uniforms and eagle nosed spinster teachers.

And he did it brilliantly.

I’d settle for that.

Seeing Red…

2012-01-03T17:34:00.007Z

This time last year I faced an uncertain future.

This time this year I face an uncertain future.

It isn’t even as if I haven’t spent the last year or so not trying to make it certain. It’s just that I think I’ve come to believe (at last) that the future isn’t certain. So who knows what future I’ll be facing this time next year?

There goes my last little bit of the arrogance of my youth, be seeing you – not that I should have been clinging to it at my age.

And then, outside the January wind is howling and inside me the wind is howling just as fiercely.

As a character from my imagination once said:
‘Everything is chance. Life is chance. Death is chance. Chance is chance.”
And indeed it is.

I can’t understand it.
I had it all worked out.
I’d prepared.
Nothing was left to chance.

Wrong! Everything is chance.
Sometimes it simply makes me see Red.

I was talking to Red this morning. Red’s a friend of mine, he’s been hanging around for a while now. He’s the sort of friend that you need when things aren’t going the way that you'd planned them. He doesn’t have many answers but at least he makes the questions easier to ask, loosening the tongue just enough so that I can face the way things seem to have turned out so far.

“This was my year Red.” I explained to him, “This was the year I’d planned it all for.”

I won’t go into the details but at one time it seemed so doable. I’d planned you see – both financially and life, even to the extent that I’d managed to bring everything to fruition at the same time – family, house, financial security. Everything came together at fifty-five. At fifty-five I would have choice, moderate security, and freedom.

Red just smiled at me. He didn’t say anything; he didn’t have to say anything, and anyway - he didn’t have anything to say.

Red’s like that, no answers but sometimes a solution – well, at least he’s not a six-foot-three-and-a-half-inches tall white rabbit like some... well not yet at least.

HNY - singing not screaming…

2012-01-02T18:13:00.008Z

Another New Year’s Eve slipped away in the way they do. This year’s though I didn’t see in - just another symptom of all that’s gone on I guess. No worries. I’ll deal with it - whatever the outcome may be.

New Year’s day in Wales, grey sky and grey mood. So here we go, another New Year’s Day and another doodle. Pay no attention to this first doodle of my year, that isn’t blood, its cochineal and that scream… well, I could be singing I guess. And who says that's me anyway? It could be that other fellah.

Last year was a mother-fucking-bitch of a year (sorry I tried to find other words, but like a JD and coke, nothing else quite hit that particular spot). Yes, a real mother-fucking-bitch. So bad that it seems to have clouded my ability to see the forward that could (must) be coming.

Looking in the mirror this morning I saw that clichéd stranger so many lyricists and writers go on about. This time the stranger was grey haired, broken faced, and caught in a spotlight like another clichéd rabbit. Might have been that other fellah though. Who knows?

I smiled, he smiled. And smiling again I turned to my good friend Red who isn’t usually up and about that early.

“Wad’ya think Red?”
“Happy New Year, Grandad.”
“Thanks Red, Happy New Year to you too.”

Yes Happy New Year, lets hope it gets better as it goes on.
Anyway, I might be singing and not screaming.
And it might not be me at all.
Yes, definitely singing, and definitely not screaming -
But I’ve no idea what the song is.

Wales...

2011-12-29T09:14:00.003Z

It's been almost four months since I went to the cottage in Wales. Oh, Gaynor and Holly have been, but not me. Hard to believe considering how my life was once defined by my trips there.

Anyway, I'm off there for a few days over New Year and I'm wondering what to expect. These last months have been so different, the days have just melted into each other so that often I have absolutely no idea what day of the week it is and certainly not the date.

I wonder what it'll be like. I'll let you know when I get back.

Take care while I'm away and I hope you enjoy your New Year celebrations.

Happy New Year!

An appeal from Mr. Glass to all you on-line wizards...

2011-12-28T18:30:00.005Z

The wind is howling, the weather wet. This is the limbo time, the time when nothing but reflection is possible and all the fears and fears of the previous year hang heavy on your mind trying to crush you with their weighty self-importance.

The shed, the gas tank, the bank balance, and the glass, the glass, the glass…

Yes, with Christmas and the Christmas glass-rush all over and finished I am left feeling as flat as the proverbial fart. No, flatter. For a while there, with all my orders and the fun and worry of getting them all out before Christmas Eve, I felt as if I was riding the crest of a wave.

And I must have been because now that wave has come crashing down and I’m bobbing around in a cold and empty ocean just waiting for… well, whatever comes next I guess. A hungry shark would be preferable to a slow death through hypothermia though. (Please God).

Oh, I’m still sure that I have a great product that people want and I do believe that I am good at this malarkey, but at the end of the day it’s a numbers game and I need to generate the volume I require. The volumes aren’t massive, in fact the volumes are very achievable, but I ain’t gonna get them by sitting on my arse and waiting for people to wander into my shop and buy from me. It ain’t Christmas time any more.

And just why am I saying ‘ain’t’? Have I suddenly turned into some sort of glass gangster or something? Maybe I’ve spent too long being a trader (whatever that is) already, already. Oi vay!

Yes, I really wish it could be Christmas every day. I really don’t mind the late finishes, the 5.30 am starts to bake the glass, the cars, the funny faces, the Christmas Eve panic trying to rectify a mistake on that glass at the last minute (well, Greg can be spelt with two g’s apparently).

I did it though. I genuinely believe in offering great customer service and I have the Christmas day texts, e-mails, and the three customers who popped in to thank me today to prove it.

All I have to do now is make like Christmas every day.

The answer would appear to be online. These days all answers appear to be online, but even with my experience I find myself ill-equipped to make it happen. If I have one resolution this year, one necessity that is - I must take my glass online.

For those online wizards out there – all help gratefully accepted.

If I ever needed help I need it now.

My Christmas present to myself...

2011-12-26T16:59:00.004Z

Boxing Day with Christmas day gone. Well almost, some of it remains in my doodle book, gathered over the run of the morning, afternoon, evening, and well into the early hours.

Fuelled by the day itself – the presents, and food, and candles, the fire, the chestnuts, the tree, some quiet, and some noise - helped along by a slow procession of seasonal drinks – morning champagne, a pre-dinner jaggers and taggers, red wine, port, some JD and cokes, and finally a long late night scotch on ice - a nightcap.

Yeah, as someone who was once close said to me once I lead an alcohol fuelled existence, meaning it as a jibe. Of course I don’t, and her judgement only ever took into account her own small view, a set of arse-tight tiny beliefs and standards so full of doubt and self-importance that even trust was given a probability score.

Me? 2 out of10.

Anyway, if you can’t have a few drinks on Christmas Day… Well, I just hope it all shows in the work.

Throughout the day and night – above and below the ribbon’s outer lines, segmented up – morning, afternoon, night, and very late dark; five minutes here, a flick of ink there. Thirty seconds scribbling with my new pound shop felts (thanks Santa), careful manipulation of liquid gold, a flash of silver string, some scribbled words “hello, hello, hello – merry had a little lamb”. A record of my day and night encapsulated in my mind and allowed to pour itself onto my paper in any form it and I wanted it to.

Look closely. It isn’t quite the chaos it first appears to be.

Oh look – a Christmas tree!

My Christmas Day present to myself – all wrapped up in red ribbons and silver string.

A memory and a freedom and such a precious freedom. Fuelled by alcohol? Well maybe a little, but what great fuel and what a great memory.

Tin cans and Christmas day presents 2011 – for your pleasure and mine.

Tin cans...

2011-12-25T17:39:00.005Z

So, Christmas Day.

Up and showered by nine, mid morning champagne, present opening, early afternoon dinner, too much wine, not enough air, and the house far too warm with the heating cranked up to full.

I made a tin can telephone out of two old coffee cans and a length of string then Holly and I played and whispered to each other in the hallway for a while, our words bouncing along the white twine, echoing on our ears.

“Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas.”
“Merry had a little lamb its fleece was white as snow.”

No snow this year though, just drizzly rain.

Evening now and, trying to shake off the need to doze, I park myself in the kitchen and drink a coffee. Jack Daniels later with his good friend Pepsi, but at this moment I need some caffeine and perhaps a glass of sparkling water.

And all day the drizzly rain in my mind falling on my thoughts and threatening to dampen them. Communication is such a hard thing and sometimes there just aren’t enough tin cans to go around, and anyway I wouldn’t be able to tie the string – my fingers might fail me yet again.

Not everyone though - still some words along the strings when really I'm not sure that I deserve them. I take them anyway and thanks - you have no idea just what they mean to me.

"Its fleece was white as snow.”

Time to light the fire, get a good blaze going. That will chase away this drizzle, but I may leave a candle lit. Who knows?

Merry Christmas.

Whatever...

2011-12-25T01:10:00.004Z

Happy Christmas,

whatever...

And I do mean whatever.

Whatever.

A meander…

2011-12-23T19:55:00.007Z

They say that when you have no idea what to write about that it is best to just start writing and see where it takes you. So I guess this page is a bit of an adventure, I have no idea where it is leading but I’ve started out now so I’ll have to finish.

Which way to go? Ah, I think I’ll walk towards that wood; I never could see the wood for the trees.

Sometimes when things get messy I just put one foot in front of the other and trudge on. It’s a lesson that I’ve learnt over this last year particularly (more about this year later once it is nearer to an end I expect). Trudging on has become my coping mechanism and defence.

No, I don’t think that this is the right path. Maybe I should forget the wood and see what’s down by the river.

So I’m writing as suggested but still have nothing to say. If you’ve got this far I won’t blame you if you head off home now. This is likely to be a bit of a meandering walk.

I stayed up late last night. I’m up to date with my glass and yesterdays bake is cooking away as I prattle. The glass seems to have caught people’s imaginations. I’ve certainly made a lot of Christmas presents and on Christmas morning husbands and wives, grans and granddads, boys and girls will open their deluxe carry boxes and find their hand-painted wine/beer/whisky/juice glass sparkling in its tissue paper wrapping.

I am such a wonderful person to be making all those people so happy.

This seems like a good path but I think I’ll go that way instead. That’s what I do when things are going well. I head off in a different direction, making it hard for myself.

Perhaps that’s what my new doodles are about. I have no idea where they are going but I know they are going to take me somewhere that I’ve not been to before. Just as I knew that when I started writing this blog - all those posts ago - that it would take me somewhere. I still don’t know why I do those drawings and mostly the making of them is – well not unconscious, but always semi-conscious. Perhaps it is the wine.

Well, this isn’t working is it? Nothing much coming out at all, not that I want it to. I’d rather wander than come out with what’s on my mind. I’d rather trudge on head down, staring at my feet and telling myself everything is okay when it isn’t. It isn’t okay at all – and I can’t do much about it. Not without losing what little of myself I’ve managed to salvage.

The wind’s at my back now. It’s blowing cold. I’m just going to take a look in that church over there. Have a sit for a bit, rest up, think, stop and see what I can come up with. Best you go your own way now. See you later.

Beat on…

2011-12-22T22:52:00.005Z

There’s been a whisper in the air for a while now. Something not quite heard, not yet audible, but there nonetheless. I haven’t caught it properly, whatever it is, but almost – yes, almost.

A change is coming. A change has come.

The question is - will this change make a difference? I ponder this as I paint my glass, drag out my words, splash my paint and prick my fingers; will that change make a difference?

My heart of hearts is a secret place. There’s darkness there and the pumping of blood, anger, hurt, and even good old-fashioned sentiment – but love?

I look in the mirror at a person I don’t know and listen to me heart of hearts pumping away and away and away, beating an answer in fleshy flaccid Morse.

Anyway, what I only felt has come about. It won’t change anything. It can’t change me. I’ll never be what I’m expected to be no matter what these old or new humans call me and expect. And why should I? I am just me. So you don’t like it? So what! All the stereotypical, rose tint in the world – gold shoes or not – don’t matter a whole hill of beans - I'm me. Keep you messages and vendettas. Make all the empty people choose sides. Who cares?

Not me. It’ll make no difference. It’s gone too far. The corner has been turned and I don’t see behind me anymore. Beat on my heart. Beat on.

I am the machine...

2011-12-19T21:43:00.009Z

I am the machine. Flawed and pitted, rusting and in need of oil, wasting away in a cornfield somewhere. Kansas or Oz it hardly matters.

I am the machine. Dreaming of electric sheep – one, baaaa – beep... two, baaaa – beep. ..three, baaaa – beep.

I am the machine. Behatted in my dunce's cap, my thought and feelings all funnelled away by life.

I am the machine. The ghost of Christmas past and oh so many other things so also past.

I am the machine. Conveyor belt of glass and joy and smiles, and if a machine could feel good about itself. I would.

But at least I’m the machine of my own making. Willingly doing what I do because I want to, and not because anyone is telling me.

And - More – So – Each – Day – That – Passes.

Machines can’t be told you see. They just do,

Ha-ha!

Of course there’s a flaw in my programming.

My heart.

If only I were the Tin Man this wouldn’t be a problem. But never a day goes by without regret, remembering, but most of all resolve.

I AM the machine and I SHALL remain so.

Machines can’t have feelings but sometimes, late on into the evening air when my cogs stop turning and my pistons halt - I wish my heart would stop its beating.

Machines can’t have feelings but sometimes, late on into the evening air when my cogs stop turning and my pistons halt - I wish my heart would stop its beating.

Notes to myself…

2011-12-18T21:04:00.007Z

So is this how it's going to be from now on? Late night cutting and splashing with no idea what I'm trying to make. Must be me raging against the machine - except I am the machine.

I don’t mind. At least machines don’t have feelings and without feelings you can’t get hurt.

Christmas, one lost and another regained, bloody bloody.

Yes, late night cutting and splashing - and I have big plans for it next year - another year of trying new things then. Pity she won’t see it.

Yes, I am the machine, so I’ll rage against myself. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

The doodle will have to follow. I’m off to make it now.

Christmas at home...

2011-12-17T19:28:00.002Z

It has been many years since we spent Christmas at home, over twelve but less than fourteen. Christmas for a number of years has been spent in Wales.

This year though, circumstance, fate, and the calling of the glass have conspired against me to keep us at home – and I’m really looking forward to it.

Not that I don’t enjoy Christmas in Wales. I do, very much. But this year I think I need the security old memories bring and the warmth that is given by a roaring log fire, maybe they’ll even be a cricket in the hearth.

Home is a big old rambling place. It needs a bit of attention in places and maybe a bit of a de-clutter (I’m a magpie you see), but generally it isn’t so bad and I love it particularly at Christmas time.

The best Christmas that I can remember was spent here in this house. My Mum, Dad, Sister Caroline and her family came to stay. We cranked up the wholly inadequate heating and filled all the sparish rooms with blow up beds - even the office in the cellar.

On Christmas afternoon after a fabulous dinner we all gathered - me, Caroline, Gary, Mum, Dad, Alex, Camilla, Gaynor, Holly, and Frank and Joan - in the upstairs lounge and had an afternoon concert. Everyone did a turn. Holly put on a puppet show, Alex played his violin, Frank recited a poem, and I sang a version of ‘What do we do with a drunken sailor’ substituting the names of all around until everyone had been covered and made a fool of. I made it up as I went along – it was a triumph!

All very A Christmas Carol - but such fun.

This Christmas will be a little quieter I guess. Mum and Dad are in Australia, I haven’t seen Caroline, Gary and family for a while, and poor old Frank (the eternal soldier) died a few years back. It’ll just be me, Gaynor, Holly and Joan.

But we’ll have some fun I hope.

Maybe I’ll get the puppets out anyway.

First fall...

2011-12-16T22:35:00.007Z

Up at seven to bake the glass - I’ve become a strange sort of Baker.

Fumbling my way downstairs I noticed that special light through the glass of the front door. The snow light. And with it that crisp silence when everything is slightly deadened by the whiteness all around.

Cars hardly make a sound. Grammar boys on their way to school are muted for once.

It wasn’t much of a fall, just enough to put a frosting on my hedge, like icing upon a Christmas cake - but enough.

First fall.

I wonder what is to come.

Cold, hearts, and the aurora borealis…

2011-12-15T18:43:00.003Z

A few years back, when it seemed like nothing could stop me, we all three went to Lapland to visit Father Christmas.

Gaynor’s fortieth birthday treat, a magical day Holly, and the realisation of a boyhood dream for me.

It was probably the most extravagant thing I’ve ever done; we were up at five, into our thermal underwear, taxied to the airport and flown across the North Sea to snowy Lapland for the day.

The snow at Kittila airport was unbelievable, deep and thick and even as the carol goes, we could feel the cold as we walked to the changing area to get kitted up in our snowsuits and boots. Layer after layer we pulled on. Holly in a bright red quilted suit and Gaynor in blue. Mine was black I think.

Then off in a snow-chained coach for the adventure of a lifetime.

In just a few hours we managed to squeeze in Reindeer sleighing, tobogganing, snowball fighting, skidoo racing, we even built a snowman. Then as evening came it was off to Santa’s chalet to meet the man himself.

I remember being a little disappointed when we got there. The place looked like just any other farm. But then I noticed the line of Christmas trees all aglow with lights, and the stables where we found Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen, carefully munching on hay.

What was I expecting? Disneyland? This was Santa’s home. It was real. It had to be practical.

The chalet itself was very cosy, log walls and chintz, roaring fires and paintings of elves on the walls. Santa sat in a room just off the hallway, so we waited for out turn to see the great man. At last we were ushered in and Holly told the red-suited figure what she wanted for Christmas, then we said goodbye and were ushered out.

Not even time for me to tell him what I wanted or to ask him how come I’d never got that Lone Ranger gun belt with the two pearl handled pistols and twenty silver bullets – and no photographer to take a picture, how aptly strange.

Back on the plane and in the air I caught a glimpse of the Northern Lights high in the sky in the distance. The aurora borealis - flashing its green as it waved me goodbye.

The dream was over - almost as if it had never taken place. Cold, hearts, and the aurora borealis…wishes to ashes.

And no photograph.

Pigs might fly...

2011-12-14T20:44:00.010Z

I often wonder if those pigs will ever fly.

My dad couldn't help but say it whenever I came up with one of my ideas or plans.
“Yes, and pigs might fly.” He’d say.

Pigs might fly - a humourous/sarcastic remark, used to indicate the unlikeliness of some event or to mock the credulity of others; for example, "I might make a start on papering the back bedroom tomorrow". "Yes, and pigs might fly" – and indeed they might. I can’t remember the last time I papered a back bedroom.

Anyway, some of us know that pigs can fly. After all, the newspapers keep talking about 'swine flu' (sorry).

'Pigs might fly', or as some would have it 'pigs may fly', is an example of an adynaton, that is, a figure of speech that uses inflated comparison to such an extent as to suggest complete impossibility. Other examples are 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle...' and 'Make a mountain out of a molehill'. Both of which I have done, much to the discomfort of the camel and it was a bloody big molehill in the first place – and you should have seen the size of that mole.

Why pigs? Well other creatures have appeared in similar phrases - 'snails may fly', 'cows might fly' and we all know about Dumbo the elephant… “I’ve seen a horse fly”, but it is pigs have stood the test of time probably because they are both cute and pink, like porky angels.

Lewis Carroll brought up the subject in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865:
"I've a right to think," said Alice sharply... "Just about as much right," said the Duchess, "as pigs have to fly."

Then in 1909, in a humorous attempt (in the way the French find poo humerous) to prove that pigs can take to the air, the pioneer aviator Baron Brabazon of Tara, better known to his friends as John Theodore Cuthbert Moore Brabazon, took a piglet aloft in his private biplane, strapped into a wastepaper basket – a man after my own heart it would seem - mad as a choir of squirrels.

“Pigs might fly” my dad would say whenever I had one of my ideas or plans.
“Pigs might fly.”

And for a while, over the years, I guess they did. Who’d have thought that a kid like me would have had the life I’ve had. Of course it isn’t quite like it was at the moment but I’m still hopeful that I might catch a glimpse of the occasional flying pig.

Yes, my pigs may fly again.

Rubbish picture...

2011-12-12T18:03:00.002Z

No, not one of mine, but a picture made literally from rubbish.

This is the contents of the container we use for collecting food waste ready to be moved to the green waste bin outside. We keep it on the counter by the kitchen sink and last night whilst I was washing up it just caught my eye.

'Wow!'I thought. 'Just look at that. it's almost as if someone's arranged all that stuff to make a picture.'

It was only the string from some roasted lamb breast, a couple of lily leaves, a few cooked and discarded frozen peas and some carrot peelings - but what a pleasing sight it made. The greens and oranges making a bright arrangement of colour without any human intervention.

It's at time like those when I wonder if chance and randomness are all that is required to make art.

Not for me…

2011-12-11T20:00:00.004Z

I was almost off to bed when I was struck by the urge to scribble.

I don’t know why. It just happens that way sometimes, like an itch that keeps moving until you have scratched most of the skin from your shoulders and back leaving you bleeding.

To be honest though it had been a long day at the glass face and I really couldn’t be arsed, itch or no itch.

But then the blue pencil crayon that had been lurking on the kitchen work surface watching me all evening was in my hand and my scrap book opened almost of it’s own accord. Yes, I have a book now, I’m progressing. The crayon frenetically scratched a couple of ovals onto the surface and the pink felt tip from the pound shop packet flew and flurried its pink on the paper.

Wet ink thrown here, a squiggle of silver straight from the tube there, and in less than five minutes there it was, or rather there they were.

Mother and child.

I’ve no idea why, they're not for me you see. I don’t believe and the last thing I want to spend my time doodling, when really I want to be asleep, are schmaltzy, sentimental, Christmas cardy drawings of mothers and babies, holy or not.

I still did it though – scribbled and blew and splashed - guilty as charged m'lord.

I wonder why?

Perhaps it wasn’t for me at all.

Perhaps it was for someone else. For them maybe, or perhaps it was for you.

Victorian Christmas...

2011-12-10T20:18:00.003Z

So today was our Victorian Christmas day – mulled wine, mince pies, pianist and cello, and costumes.

So here I am all the Victorian shopkeeper. Bowler hatted, bow tied, all be braced, aproned, moustachioed - and with a pillow that’s taken me years to grow stuffed up my shirt.

I just love dressing up.

Well even the glass meister has to let his hair down sometimes.

Funny things…

2011-12-09T21:31:00.001Z

My mum and dad have flown off to Australia to visit my sister. They’ll be gone for a few weeks, six or seven, during which time I probably won’t speak to them but find out what they are up to via Facebook – my sister Della posts all the time.

This is the picture she took whilst waiting for them to come off the plane and when my mum saw her she didn't recognise her and told Della to 'Take care' ... She thought she was off the plane! Well, it’s a long flight and she’s as dotty as a polka dot frock anyway, but what a funny thing.

And talking of funny things, here’s another. I miss them already even though we usually only communicate by phone, annoying each other with our separate conversations, my dad calling in the back, my mum relaying messages that I’ve already heard (he has a loud voice).

And here’s another funny thing. I never worry about them when they are home (well not often) but I’m already worrying now that they are so far away. What if this should happen? What if that should happen?

And the funniest thing at all?
I didn’t expect to feel this way.

Sets me to thinking, but I don’t want to go there just yet, not for many, many years. Not at all really but I know that one day I’ll have to.

Anyway down safe after a long journey, have a great time mum and dad, missing you and see you soon. Take care!

A little excitement...

2011-12-08T21:32:00.003Z

It wasn’t the light that got him.

Of course he was attracted to it. After all, light is like the moon - and as each moth knows one must follow one’s mothy heart and fly towards the silvery glimmer.

But no it wasn't the light. It wasn’t the light at all. It was the reflection of the light in the water of the sink drainer tray; and flying directly toward and into it he drowned.

Maybe we are all moths, flying towards the light only to find that we are mistaken, drowning in a sea of glimmer rather than being content with the everyday dullness that is our discontentment.

Poor moth, he was only looking for a little excitement and found extinction instead.

Look how he shines though.

My Christmas drawing...

2011-12-07T23:06:00.016Z

I still remember the Christmas drawings I made as a kid back in the sixties. We all did them didn't we? All those cut out stars that Mrs. Kemble wanted me to make for the nativity frieze.

Sugar paper and glue, and thick fat poster paint dribbling off the picture and onto the floor.
Oh little town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie.

Jesus and Mary and angels and shepherds and that stuck on real straw in the scribbled manger, a halo of tinfoil around the baby Jesus' head.

Such fun and wonder and safety back then.
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.

And then there was the making of Christmas cards to take home to our mums on the last day of term. Santa's and snowmen and reindeer and stars and those badly drawn camels with one, two, even three humps. "happy Cristmas mum - joy to the wold!"
Yet in the dark street sh-i-i-i-ineth the everlasting light.

Last day and the taking home of the Christmas tree decorations and paper chains, carefully coloured and gummed, fluffily festooned with cotton wool snow and smiles.

Brown paper, Santa, and stars.
Pine trees, snow, and dark.
Life, love, and hope.

And somewhere up above a snowman clinging to an uncertain and fragile existence in a fragile and uncertain world.
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

Can you see him?
I can.

Christmas is coming.

I can hardly wait.

Tales from the glass painters table - old ladies, Frodo and Alice....

2011-12-06T22:06:00.008Z

Well I did say that I could do anything on glass and trust an old lady to put me to the test.

"Could you paint my daughter's cats on two paperweights? You did tell me last week that you could do anything?' She said, taking out two photographs from her huge, black handbag.

"Er, yes." I said because I had.

" See you next week then." She replied breezily, assuming that a week was long enough for me to do such a simple task regardless of how my order book was looking.

Well I put it off for as long as I could but last night had to bite the bullet and get on with it. After all, she's coming to collect tomorrow.

I hadn't reckoned on the size of the photographs and I forgot that painting on a convex surface is actually quite hard. By the time I finished my eye-hand coordination was finished as well, and my visual logical tracking system was buggered.

I'm almost quite happy with them - Frodo and Alice - not perfect, but good enough I think. Or at least I hope so. You know what old ladies can be like.

Snow giants, a late post, and sleep...

2011-12-06T07:54:00.010Z

So I missed my window of opportunity to post last night.

Not that it was much of an opportunity, or much of a window; and thinking about it - well, it really wasn't much of a post either. Just a picture of the snow clouds that I saw above our house this morning, promising snow that never came.

Strange old day though in so many ways, not least of all the weather. Hail, torrential rain, wind and cold, and then last evening a single flash of lightening followed by a deep rolling, rumbling, drum roll boom of thunder. It was so unexpected, so out of season, that I wondered if it wasn't thunder at all but the waking yawn of some huge snow giant far in the frozen north.

Yes, that was probably it. A snow giant waking ready to steadily trudge his way across the land dropping his heavy load of snow as he comes.

Anyway that was what I was dreaming of when I awoke, still sitting on the couch, at three-thirty this morning absolutely shattered and ever so slightly dazed. So I trudged my own slow way off to bed without even bothering to post the words I'd written about the snow clouds.

That's the thing with my world of glass. It takes all my time and leaves me so tired that other things sometimes get left aside.

This morning there's still no snow but it's pouring with rain and the wind is howling again. Perhaps that snow giant went back to sleep - at least for now.

To market, to market...

2011-12-04T19:26:00.006Z

"To market, to market, to buy a fat pig."

Altrincham Craft and Vintage Market on a wet and freezing Sunday morning. Up at six to bake the candle glasses, loading the car in the pouring rain, unpacking and arranging the stall.

"My life is one demd horrid grind."

Yes, sometimes I feel like a character in a Dickens novel. Just which character changes dependent on circumstance – Brushywig the glass painter, Coinscrew the trader, old Mr. Potty the eccentric (some say madman). At least I'm not an Abel Magwich, or at least I don't think I am.

Today I was a combination of all those first three as I stood behind my stall purveying my wares, doing deals and up-selling to make the merchandise move.

I didn’t do great and I didn’t do badly, I really enjoyed the catching of interest though. Not a bad day at all, all-in-all.

"Home again, home again, jiggety-jig."

The lenghtening of the autumn days...

2011-12-03T22:52:00.008Z

So I decide to make a picture and tell the world on Facebook. Well, not decide exactly, kind of have to.

I set out with my paper and pens with really no idea where this is going and then, after thirty or forty minutes, sometimes far less, of splashing and scratching, pouring and scribbling, I have something - although often at the end of it I have no idea what.

These days though, it doesn’t matter.

Gone are the days of pouring over paper and landscape, slavishly trying to copy the light and shade. I don’t and can’t do that anymore. I’m seeing things differently. I’m making my own light and shade. Or it is making me.

Anyway, it just happens. Thank God.

It’s all there you know, it’s all there if you look - the clowns and the conundrums, the leaves and the leavings, the tears and the blood to make any number of me.

What would Charlie have said? ’Look after your hands boy; they have a talent inside them.’

Maybe. Or maybe it wasn’t the hands, maybe it was the life – mewling, pushing me over and over so many times that eventually I just had to let it out.

Anyway, it just happens. Thank God.

So here it is; the lengthening of the autumn days. Here it all is at almost winter. Well formed upon the page with leaves and sun and moon and shadow and all bright red - and my pricked thumbed autumnal blood.

You work it out. I can’t. It just happens. But it’s all there if you care to look.

Yes. It just happens.

Itsy bitsy...

2011-12-02T20:19:00.004Z

Just look who I found spinning his web and crawling across the old latch of my kitchen window this morning. What a magnificent orange, and just look at those wonderful stripy legs. I wonder what team he supports?

Now I'm no Robert the Bruce, but seeing him got me wondering to what he was doing there. I watched him clambering around for a while, picking his way here, picking his way there, aimlessly checking out my windowsill and then he jumped down from the ledge on a thread of silver web, landed on the floor, squeezed his way beneath the crack in the skirting and left me to wonder if he'd ever been there at all.

Spiders are so indifferent to us humans. Not like us, we're the other way around.

Not really a blog post...

2011-12-01T21:53:00.007Z

Life's rich tapestry (or at least the needle and thread that embroiders it) continues to stitch me up - more or less.

Due to other engagements tonight's post isn't really post at all, more a note or two mainly about not very much at all.

I did another school fair this evening, I'm becoming something of a regular on the scene. Me with my glass and snowmen amidst the flower arrangers, jewellery makers, and make-up people. It makes me feel strange somehow, diminished in some way. I don't know why it should, after all I sell better than most (turned a few quid tonight, I'll tell ya - 'Trader Speak') and the ladies love my witty ways.

I have become the gigolo of the glass, the lead lothario, the crystal cad, the glass man.

I am the glass man.

And one day with the use of post-it pads a plenty I will work out just what that means.

Watch out! Here comes that bloody needle again - Ouch!

Grey paint...

2011-11-30T19:13:00.005Z

So little happens in my life these days that I’m considering giving up the blogging life. Well, I spend as much time staring into space wondering what to write than I ever do writing. I can only write so many posts about painted glass.

So here I am again wondering what to write. I wouldn’t say my life was empty, but the mediocrity of it all is only just beginning to crash in on me, leaving me wondering ‘what next?’ and not having even the sniff of an answer.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a decent sunset, or watched birds feeding, or saw the sea. These were the things that set my mind to words, not this greyness that I’m becoming increasingly used to.

Grey paint, grey paint everywhere.

I suppose I could write about the stranger I had a coffee with over Knutsford way earlier in the week. The stranger who asked me questions about a previous life, getting answers which were true but I felt had happened to another person, not to me at all. He seemed interested, nodding his head in all the right places, smiling, jotting down a few notes, and after an hour or so of nothing in particular I signed his forms, shook his hand and left.

He was definitely putting me forward, he’d be in touch. I haven’t heard anything yet though.

More grey paint I'm afraid.

No, really - I'm afraid.

I’ve had a lot of ‘not hearing anything yets’ just lately, I’m still waiting to hear from one ‘we’ll definitely be in touch’ after three interviews, and that was weeks ago.

‘Yes, we’ll be in touch.’ it's all just grey paint and I’d rather they told me the truth - at least the truth has a little colour.

Catching the wind...

2011-11-29T19:36:00.002Z

No fancy header on Google which must mean that it’s a nothing sort of day, one of those days that isn’t particularly special for any reason at all.

Increasing for me days become less special as my routine becomes set into a pattern that gradually melds time in to one single ongoing – well I was going to write event, but things aren’t very eventful so I shall write non-event. It sounds like I’m complaining, but I’m not really. Broadly at the moment I don’t mind this sameness, in fact I find it quite comforting – this mini-adventure without much adventure. It’s a time of repetition. Oh, I suppose I could break out of it, throwing everything into the air in an attempt to do something radical, but for now I think I’m enjoying the calm even if the water may be going stagnant.

Each morning when I wake up usually around three, then four, then five, until I get up some time between six or seven, I tell myself, in a rather clichéd way, to count my blessings. I have something to do, I am warm, I will eat well tonight and I will go to bed tired ready to get up and do it all again tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Not how it used to be – but simple.

Yes, simple – if you don’t look beyond the moment. Simple, as making broccoli and stilton soup. Simple, if you don’t try to catch the wind and fly. Don’t get caught up in the wind, don’t go there. No, don't try to catch the wind - it may take you with it.

Go there and you will see the chaos coming, go there and who knows what excitement may happen.

Favourite brush...

2011-11-27T18:46:00.007Z

Six hours solid making product. Angels and snowmen, once plain white, now all painted and drying, shined up, given personalities, made as Christmassy as a carol sung by Santa, standing in lines, and waiting to be sold.

I'm knackered, as knackered as my favourite sable brush which after today is nearing the end of its very long life. I shall miss that brush when it is gone. It's funny how attached you get to one brush despite having dozens of others. It's almost as if the brush understands what you are trying to achieve and does it for you - who knows, perhaps it does.

Anyway that's it for today. I can't paint or write another thing.

The thought of Mr. Finger - existentialism...

2011-11-26T20:07:00.006Z

As Descartes said - 'I think therefore I am.'
An interesting statement.

What if thinking is the thing that keeps us solid?

What if I were to stop thinking, would I cease to exist? And if I stopped thinking about you, would you cease to exist as well?

If I don't think about you then you don't exist for me - but do you exist for yourself, and do I exist if you don't think about me?

So many questions... and so few fingers. Even so - you can count on me.

Dali clock...

2011-11-25T21:19:00.005Z

'Help me, I'm melting...'

No really, I’m so tired that I almost couldn’t be bothered tonight so I’m going to have to be quick, not that I’m ever really that slow.

A friend of mine (who shall remain Malcolm) texted me today asking about my Dali clock. My Dali clock? Yes my Dali clock.

A great looking piece of high quality plastic that I have indulged myself with and would only part with for three times the amount I paid for it. Make me an offer!

You see my trader’s blood grows thicker each day.

As I look at my Dali clock, watching the melting clock seconds melt away into goodness knows what melting where, I am often tempted to consider time in all of its aspects and if there is really any time at all.

Then with a realisation that my mind is far too, well what I can only call ‘gone’, to cope I decide to leave this to professor Brian Cox or even that other Brian who played with Queen (the group not the dignitary).

Of course you know you have made it as a scientist when impressionists start doing impressions of you as they have with Brian (Cox not May). He follows in the footsteps of such greats as Magnus Pyke, Patrick Moore, the two David’s (Bellamy and Attenborough - although I’m not at all sure that David Attenborough counts), and of course Marie Curie – well maybe not Marie Curie then.

He seems to manage this with only a Northern accent without a trace of a twitch or speech impediment, nor flaying hands, or whispering dulcets, or even a bushy beard. How does he do it I wonder?

Times up. The melting clock has melted. I told you I had to be quick.

So remember - things can only get better.

Tales from the glass painters table – The Outer Limits...

2011-11-24T20:02:00.004Z

The glass world grows stranger every day, requests from customers more off the wall, each with their own message to give, thoughts to send, axe to grind. Messages of love and thanks, birthdays, weddings, christening, divorces.

‘Here’s to the Marchella Fella!’
‘Captain Fantastic!’
‘Mike’s wee dram’
‘Bugger off and boil your head.’

And now to haunt my sleep and make my dreams even stranger still, a glass depicting a carrot smoking a cigar, all Savillesque and orange, on the other side a blue banana – and all around a milling crowwd of stick armed and leg potatoes with electric blue empty television eyes.

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... The Outer Limits.

My sister in Australia...

2011-11-23T20:40:00.002Z

My sister in Australia is backwards and forwards between two Australian cites at the moment. She travels on buses which I imagine to be made from burnished steel and streamlined as they travel the Australian night through deserts and over mountains, the moon huge in the deep blue Australian sky reflected on the rocks beneath it.

My sister in Australia catnapping as the vehicle thunders through the night.

My sister in Australia sometimes messages through Facebook from her mobile phone, telling me about the bus, delayed by hours, or the weather, rain today, hot and humid, snow - and I never dreaming that snow would fall in Australia.

My sister in Australia when she’s away from home sleeps in a shiny aluminium caravan, the rain drumming a rhythm on the roof above her head.

My sister in Australia missing home-home, but getting on with it anyway, doing the very best she can and coping very well.

My sister in Australia shopping at Aldi to buy the gardening things she needs for her courtyard vegetable garden where the parakeets come to feed.

My sister in Australia sitting at a picnic bench listening to the sea and watching everything around her, seeing a blue heart scraped upon the wooden surface of the bench and sending it home to me across all those miles.

My sister in Australia – reflected moonlight, cosy caravan, parakeets, and a ragged blue heart.

My sister in Australia, happy birthday - take care.

Mr. Finger says...

2011-11-22T21:05:00.007Z

What is the point?

'Point.'

Get it?

Cow period...

2011-11-21T19:13:00.008Z

I think I may be going through my very own Période vache.

‘Cow period!’ I hear the French speaking amongst you exclaim.

‘Yes, Cow Period.’

Let me explain:

René Magritte is arguably one of the most important and also, again arguably, amonst the most popular of the twentieth-century artists. Often he went against the flow of the artistic trends of his time, developing a unique and unmistakable pictorial language.

Well, he was both Belgian and a Surrealist - which is kind of an interesting blend of bland and ‘woah’! His work is of crucial influence to later generations of artists and his impact on today's visual culture is almost without equal. It wasn’t all bowler hats and fireplace trains though.

A fascinating period of his painting has passed almost unknown – his Cow period or Période vache.

I read about this in my dentist’s waiting room one cold December morning whilst waiting for some deep root canal work to be inflicted upon me. Whilst it didn’t take my mind off the pain from the abscess screaming under my poor tooth, it did surprise me. I’d never have recognised the reproduced paintings in the magazine as Magritte.

In 1948, Magritte made a group of paintings and gouaches distinctly different from the rest of his work for his first solo exhibition in Paris. He was trying a new, fast and aggressive style of painting inspired by popular sources such as caricatures and comics.

Within only a few weeks he produced about thirty entirely uncharacteristic works that caused an outrage in Paris. Magritte deliberately conceived this exhibition as a provocation of and an assault on the Parisian public and painted in an unexpectedly crude, playful, and intentionally "bad" manner, whilst reflecting his own work and painting in general.

This work still goes pretty much unnoticed and is rarely commented on today. I like it though, I like it a lot. I think that it’s some of his best giving short shift to those critics who mistakenly regard his paintings as far too familiar and far too easy to grasp.

Now, I’m not comparing myself to Magritte, but things get interesting when you work fast and loose in a crude, playful, and intentionally "bad" manner. Very interesting indeed.

That's me at the top by the way. The Magritte is below.

The Autumn King…

2011-11-20T18:15:00.003Z

Just an autumn doodle of the Autumn King made on an autumn afternoon when I really should have been doing something else and paying attention.

I want you to imagine now that you’re looking up into a beautiful night sky and that you can see, in the distance, a star. You can see one beautiful, solitary, silver star, shining down out of a velvety black night sky, and that star is millions and millions of miles away. And you focus your gaze entirely on that one, solitary silver star. And as you focus your gaze on that silvery star you notice it begins to twinkle and you become more and more relaxed, more peaceful, more calm.

And imagine yourself rising out of your body - feeling drawn toward your star - you begin moving toward your star - through space and time - through the earth's stratosphere - passing comets and planets - into a different galaxy - closer and closer toward your star - and the nearer you get to your star - the larger and brighter it becomes - and the larger and brighter it is - the more comfortable and relaxed you are - until your star is there - right in front of you - one - solitary - silver star - and you are on your star - you are in your star - and the star is in you - you are the star - up there - shining down on the earth below - millions and millions of miles away...

Doodled November sunshine and Mr. Moon, scarecrows, birds, fallen leaves, ripened crops, ploughed fields, and a star.

The Autumn King on his field-fence throne sees it all and…

smiles?

Rose tinted retrospecatacles…

2011-11-19T18:41:00.005Z

Sometimes I feel like I’m waiting for yesterday to come back.

Not one yesterday, but all of my yesterdays.

Somehow yesterday seems so much better than today and not as worrying as tomorrow. After all, you know what you are getting with yesterday with that lovely rose tint of retrospect surrounding it.

Rose tinted retrospectacles that’s what I want.

As a kid I remember watching ‘All Our Yesterdays’ on TV. I must have only five when those flickering newsreels appeared on our tiny black and white screen, pictures of our boys coming home to blighty on troop ships, fags in their mouths and whistling. Quite a trick really, smoking and whistling at the same time, like dodging bullets and not getting blown to pieces.

I remember watching tiny black and white doodlebugs stopping above the terraced roofs of London and white searchlights moving across the grey sky over a stark and grainy St. Paul’s, sand covered tanks and black bereted soldiers dusting themselves down in the Sahara.

Each programme looked at one wartime year and the newsreels from it, and I think I learnt more modern history in those twenty minute segments than ever I did at school in later years. Of course the war was a much closer thing back then, newsreels not yet an anachronism and still almost reportage.

I have an image of German soldiers goose-stepping in time, stop-start to the music of the Lambeth Waltz, cartoons from some newspaper or other and well known voices reading the captions. I remember my dad laughing.

My dad never missed it.

Somehow Granada TV seemed to take the misery and loss of that awful war and reinvent it as light entertainment, almost as comedy, colouring the old black and white footage with a thick coat of rose tint so that we could all slip on our retrospectacles and warm to the glow, telling ourselves it wasn’t so bad, when for most people it clearly was with death and separation, rationing and constant fear.

What a strange programme.

Maybe I don’t want those yesterdays after all. Perhaps I’ll take my retrospectacles off and be content with the colour of today or even the harsh black and white that tomorrow could be.

Perhaps it’s better that way.

At the glass face...

2011-11-18T20:03:00.005Z

No post last night, to be honest by the time I’d done what I needed to do I was too tired, besides what to write about?

No, it’s not all fun at the glass face.

Days melt into each other in a sameness that I’ve never experienced before. Well, not quite sameness really, but there is a uniformity about them that makes me wonder if I am actually waiting in purgatory and at any moment the devil will appear in a fancy suit and walking cane, twirl his long black moustache and welcome me to Hades.

And I think we all know exactly which way I’m going - down, down, down. Like that film with Terry Thomas, Vault of Horror, where a group of people end up in the basement of an office building when the lift malfunctions. They exchange true tales from their lives, horrific tales of murder and torture, to pass the time and when the lift door finally opens they find that they are in… HELL!

Yes, this world of glass leaves me feeling fragile and shattered (pun intended) and sometimes the other inmates of my own personal purgatory don’t really help.

Take Jack (we’ll call him Jack because Jack is such a common name) - Jack is at one moment friendly and the next moment hostile. He paces the floor of purgatory looking for anything that may be about to affront his own sense of self worth which appears to be very high. But when you look behind the hard man mask and watch his actions you begin to wonder. Jack starts arguments which turn into vendettas and then become intimidation campaigns. He really is quite a scary character, not because of what he does (well not that alone) which are irrational and unpredictable, but because I think that he thinks that he is justified and that the reality he sees in his head is really reality - which it isn’t.

Yes, Jacks in a fog. A fog of rage and imagined persecution. Everyone whispers about him, although most of the whisperers live in his own head.

Maybe Jack has been put in my purgatory to test me. Maybe he is an agent of Lucifer sent to sort the wheat from the chaff, the good from the bad, the strong from the weak, the honest from the charlatan. Will he find me wanting I wonder?

Maybe - and maybe he’s just a young man in need of a lot of help.

Have we reached the bottom yet?

Spooky tale anyone?

Foreign muck...

2011-11-16T19:53:00.004Z

Dinner, supper, tea, doesn’t matter what you call it, it isn’t what it used to be.

Take my meals over the last few days for instance. Saturday I ate Italian (minestrone followed by spaghetti and meat sauce), Sunday Thai (Thai green curry and rice), Monday French (escalope of pork in a green pepper sauce with sauté potato), last night Chinese (Ribs, Prawns in ginger, Chicken with bamboo and water chestnuts), and tonight we are having Moroccan (spiced lamb, chick peas, and sweet potato cooked in the tagine with flat breads).

I hasten to add all these meals were home cooked and quite delicious.

How different from my childhood. Back then it was sausage and mash, fish and chips, meat pie, liver and onions, and a roast on Sunday. Spaghetti came in cans and rice was made with milk. I can remember endless joyous childhood teas when all I eat was beans on toast – how I loved beans on toast, still do.

In the town where I lived the only take-away was Kimberley’s fish and chip shop, pubs didn’t do food, not even sandwiches, and restaurants (I can only remember one) served pretty much the same fare as we ate at home, just on posher plates. You could get beef burger, egg, and chips at the Wimpy, and steak and roast chicken at the Berni, but these were in the larger towns not the little town of Thame.

There were no fast food places (well, Kimberley’s I guess), not even a sandwich shop. Back then Mother’s made their own sandwiches – cheese and pickle, corned beef, egg and cress, roast chicken. Nothing tikka’ed, no grape and sloppy cheese, and bread was bread not panini, ciabatta, or wrap, and I didn’t know that pizza even existed.

The fist time I tasted ‘foreign food’ was the anglicised spaghetti bolognaise made by the school cook at Lord Bill’s. Minced beef and tomato, topped with overcooked spaghetti, covered in grated cheddar, and baked in the school ovens until it was crisp. Delicious.

She also made a version of curry with stuck together boiled rice, full of raisons and not hot at all, we all loved it.

And of course there were those Vesta curry meals.

Then the Chinese came to town and the world changed overnight. Chan could cook bean sprouts to perfection. Bean sprouts? What was a bean sprout? And his Chinese curries were to die for, and some town residents probably did.

Soon you could buy chilli mixes at the bottom shop, and rice, and dried spaghetti. And then everybody was boiling spaghetti and rice for forty minutes, trying that ‘foreign muck', and quite enjoying it. It was a gastronomic revolution. My mum even started to buy and use spices! Well, not buy them. By this time Swartz had opened a factory on the industrial estate and my Uncle Len was working there.

Yes what a change in such short a space of time.

What foreign muck shall I have for tea tomorrow?

Vesta anyone?

Ink and wine and blood...

2011-11-15T19:17:00.005Z

I know that it is autumn when I start thinking about the carnival coming to town. The carnival, or the circus, or the fair - they're all the same to me with freak shows, and boxing rings, and those clowns that swallow ping pong balls. I've written about this before but my mind is cyclical, things go around and around in there like a carousel or a Ferris wheel.

Beep-beep I'm in the car, ring-ring driving the fire engine, buzz-buzz I'm on the bus.

And so it goes that at this time of year, as the darkness deepens and Christmas isn't quite near enough to be upon us, that I find myself looking to the dark. Looking deep to see what I can see, crying out by the castle.

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.

What freedom in ink and wine and blood.

John Wayne...

2011-11-14T18:54:00.002Z

Well I guess it had to happen.

A lady ordered a glass from me at the weekend for her brother Peter. Peter's a big fan of John Wayne, it was his birthday last Thursday and she wanted something special for him.

She asked if I could put a cowboy on the glass for her and as usual I asked what interests the person, in this case Peter, had. I usually do this to try to find out how best to personalise the glass and she told me that Peter was in his fifties, Downs syndrome, and he loves cowboy films - particularly John Wayne films.

I offered to put a picture of John Wayne on the glass and agreed that I could have it for her for Monday, today.

She came in at half-past four to collect it but couldn't. I hadn't done it you see, I'd forgotten about it completely despite it being in my order book. She was very good about it but I was mortified. I hate letting people down, I hate not meeting my commitments, I hate breaking my word, and at that moment I hated myself.

Anyway, I apologised and said I'd deliver it to her in the morning and that there would be no charge for the glass or the box I'm going to put it in.

Serves me right. I'm going to get a production diary.

Even the darkest day has golden birds...

2011-11-13T17:55:00.004Z

I haven’t been to Wales for a while now but it’s still there in my head, the clouds scudding across the hills and mountains, the foam tossed into the air from the sea, the whistle of the wind, and the crack of the branch upon the tree.

Sometimes when I awake to the sameness of another day I wonder what’s it all about, what corner did I turn to get me here, and will I ever find my way again? Then a deep gloom fills me and I wonder if I can go on.

It doesn’t last long. I get up and brush myself down and go upon my way, about my business, putting on the brave face I keep in my back pocket for all the world to see.

Sometimes I think I'm living in a mirror, seeing the world palely from behind the silvered glass.

No, I’ve not been able to get to Wales recently, but I will some day soon, and really I’m there all the time inside my head.

Even the darkest day has golden birds.

Guardian angel...

2011-11-12T21:02:00.006Z

I'm sure that there are times when we all feel that we have a guardian angel.

I'm equally sure that there are times when we all feel that we don't.

Once when I was a young man living in Birmingham, getting up early after working late, rushing out of the house bleary-eyed after a late night freelancing, running down the gulley, scarf flapping, floundering across the road and onto the busy dual carriageway, my guardian angel appeared.

Of course I never saw him/her. But I felt the rush of wings and the pull of hands as I was lifted bodily from the road and pulled back three feet to avoid the bus that I'd almost blundered into in my haste to reach the bus stop.

It must have been the candlelit carol concert from the night before along the Walsall Road at a church I can't remember the name of, but one moment I was in front of the bus as it bore down on me like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a speeding car, the next I felt the bus pass, the wind of its passing pulling the dog-tooth cap from my head and tumbling it along the gutter.

BLAHHHHHHHHHH. From the bus drivers horn. A scowl on his face as he passed full and not ever intending to stop.

I never bothered to pick up my cap. I just caught the next bus shaking.

The eleventh hour - 11.11.11

2011-11-11T18:08:00.009Z

We often talk about the eleventh hour. The last possible minute to do something about a situation before it is too late, just before we edge over that waterfall and plunge down, down, down to disaster.

It’s a biblical phrase from the book of Matthew, referring to some workmen being hired very late in the day: “And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle?”

“Dunno mate, dunno.”

Eleven is the atomic number of sodium and in chemistry Group Eleven includes the metals copper, gold and silver - the metal that Judas, the eleventh disciple, supposedly sold Jesus out for.

Eleven is the number of spacetime dimensions in M-theory as Dr. Who (who is currently in his eleventh incarnation) would know, and Apollo Eleven was the first manned spacecraft to land on the moon.

Eleven is the first (I wanted to write fist) number that can’t be counted on eight fingers and two thumbs (so, toe required) and it’s the largest prime number with a single morpheme name (morphemes are what make up words apparently, but they aren’t like syllables which is a shame because I un-der-stand syllables).

It was on the Eleventh day of Christmas that the gift of ‘Eleven pipers piping’ was made, and as those noisy buggers would know the interval of an octave and a fourth is an eleventh.

An eleven-sided polygon is called a hendecagon, eleven is the second unique prime, it goes into ninety-nine exactly nine times and eleven is a Størmer number, a Heegner number, and a Mills prime number.

Football and cricket team have eleven players, and of course as all bingo callers in the land know so well there is always a whistle for ‘Legs Eleven’ – twit-twoo.

So why am I going on so much about eleven?

Well, of course it's on this day that we remember eleven because World War I, the Great War, the war to end all wars, ended with an armistice on November the eleventh, 1918. It went into effect at eleven am - the much spoken about eleventh hour - on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Eleven.

Lest we forget.

I’ll be silent now.

November Road…

2011-11-10T20:32:00.000Z

I’m on the November Road and I don’t know where it’s leading. I trudge along hoping that the sun will break through the clouds at any moment but it doesn’t.

I’m not surprised.

November Road just sucks the journey out of you and leaves you hollow. A hollow man with hollow thoughts trudging along November Road and waiting for the sun to break through.

String and headaches. Foot after foot.

November Road never changes. I know I’m not the only one on this road. But I never seem to meet anybody. Sometimes I think that I can hear them. But it’s probably just the wind.

It’s very windy on November Road.

It howls sometimes.

Up till midnight...

2011-11-08T22:37:00.006Z

Such a day of clocks and clutter, and hardly knowing where to begin, but looking forward to the end and that peace that must come to us all at the end of the day - even if it is disturbed.

Such a day of freedom and sandwiches.

Starting with the midnight clock, not mine but running out he says tick-tock, tick-tock.

A day of snowmen and angels and maybe elves (or at least something similar) and journeys, not quite wasted but not very successful either. A young man asking for the almost impossible and me (such a fool) agreeing to do it. A mother and daughter looking for the special and me (not a fool at all) helping them to dream it.

A word play, making myself and that other smile, an almost sale, an unhappy customer justified (not mine), and so much to do and so little time.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

My grandfather's clock stuck at twelve, so forgive this brief post tonight.

And that's alright.

I’ll be up till midnight...

First frost…

2011-11-07T19:37:00.000Z

When there isn’t much to say, there’s always the weather to fall back on.

Is it a trick or do I seem to remember frosty early Novembers in my youth? I certainly remember walking to school, up North Street, down the High Street, along Southern Road and through the recreation ground, with the fields all frosted white and the hill down to the little bridge over Cuttle Brook a treachery.

With Halloween and Bonfire Night over my thoughts would turn to Christmas, the boyhood excitement beginning to grow despite me being in my very early teens. I’d long given up believing in Father Christmas but that didn’t stop me wondering what he’d bring me. No more socks, I hoped.

Sometimes I’d stop at the gate to the bottom meadow, put down my satchel, and just look out across the field at the frost-whitened grass and think of skating on Dutch canals. Don’t ask me why I thought about that, I couldn’t skate and hadn’t been to Holland at that time, but I did - a racial memory? Or perhaps images stolen from the huge book on Breugel I poured over in the library every lunch time.

I’d look down towards the brook almost hearing the whoosh of skate blades, then, with the whoops of Stephen Castle and Luke Doyle carried by the frozen air from the distance, I’d snatch up my books and scuttle the rest of my way to school. I didn’t want to meet those two, they were at best snide and at worst outright bullies, often pushing and shoving and throwing my scarf into the mud.

I got them back though, oh yes, I got them back – but I’ll save that for another time.

So, first frost this morning. Cars all white windscreens and a chilly nip to the air. The smoky smell of yesterday’s after-bonfire air all cleaned up and replaced by ice sharp freshness.

Winter’s coming.

Tales from the glass painters table...

2011-11-06T17:59:00.010Z

Guess what I'm getting ready for.

Well it is only 48 days,
or 1158 hours,

or 69, 4510 minutes,

or 4,167,015 seconds away.

This is my army of hand-painted glass-glazed snowmen candle holders painted ready for a Christmas fare on Wednesday night.

I've painted the orange carrot noses, the patterned woollen bobble hats, the metallic scarves and the tiny Christmas trees each snowman holds in his snowy hand.

What fun. The tea-light candles go inside the icy fellows and glow through the star shapes. Magic.

I hope I don't sell them all, I'd like one for myself.

Now what should I charge? Any ideas?

Other people’s fireworks…

2011-11-05T17:39:00.005Z

I suppose it could be viewed as sad that tonight I shall watch other peoples fireworks explode in the night sky all around me and feel not need to join in the fun and frolics. Not so much as a single spark from a sparkler.

There was a time when I would plan my display for weeks in advance, building my bonfire ever higher and higher, carefully considering the best attire for this years Guido, getting the pop bottles lined up for my rockets.

It wasn’t that long ago either.

I don’t know what, when, or where it or I changed. It or I just did.

These days although I still appreciate the spectacle and beauty of the fizzing, whirling, pyrotechnical wonder of it all and seeing the first bright green rocket explode in the black November sky, showering sparks in all directions high above, can still make me smile.

My smile isn’t the one it used to be and it isn't there for the same reasons, but it remains a smile - take it or leave it.

Yes, I’ll watch other people fireworks tonight remembering other bonfire nights when I’d wrap up warm and risk my life and limbs by getting too close to that squibby one that hasn't lit properly. One year I almost lost an eye, another time I picked up a roman candle, shook it to get it going and, BOOM, it exploded.

Ah, the foolishness of twenty-something or other man-boys.

I might even mumble the chant that was forever on my lips at this time of year back then –
Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...

I might, yes I really might.

Other people’s fireworks when I use to have fireworks of my own. I wonder where the sparkle went?

Automatic writing...

2011-11-04T18:47:00.006Z

I took this picture last summer but I found these words for the first time in my blog folder this evening. They were written early this morning, very early this morning when I should (and maybe was) have been asleep.

How odd. I think it must be my first successful journey into automatic writing because I have no memory of writing it or where it came from. It could be old age, it could be last night's red, but I prefer to think I've managed to tap into my subconscious successfully at last.

Whatever, whichever, wherever... here it is:

---------------------------------

It isn’t me that’s weird or my life that’s weird, but somewhere in the heady mix of COMBINATION a strange type of gasoline was invented and, well quite frankly, BOOOOOM!

So combustible, so weird, so ‘just waiting to go off – tick, tock, tick, tock – no smoking – please turn off all mobile phones – DANGER, DANGER, radioactive materials in the vicinity… RED BUTTON…. Defcom One and counting…’

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

You know when you are up on a hill and the clouds move across the landscape below?
Sometimes you see the reflection of the sun on the fields and you smile, and then sometimes the clouds scud across and darken the land and there is no sunshine to see?

Remember that fleeting frown.
Remember that fleeting frown?
Please remember that fleeting frown.

It is like being okay but only almost. Knowing that at any moment the sun can go behind that cloud and the world, your world, will turn dull - then grey - then black.

I call it life, but generally today there was more sunshine than cloud. It is what keeps me moving. More sunshine than cloud.

Why there was no blog last night...

2011-11-03T19:09:00.007Z

No blog last night. Not that you noticed.

Well, not much happens between Halloween and Bonfire Night in this neck of the woods and to tell you the truth, well sometimes I simply can't be bothered.

Not often, but sometimes.

Sometimes I'd rather slip off my shoes, release my socks from my ankles, light a candle, and breathe in the sweet smell of lilies - and who wouldn't?

I don't relax much, I'm not a relaxing kind of person, but sometimes I just want to switch off.

Switching off is hard though. Switching off means forgetting about the shed that needs moving, the bank accounts that need checking, the essay that needs writing, the glass that needs painting, the soup (pumpkin) that needs souping, the Facebook that needs checking, the carpet that needs cleaning, the book that needs writing, the painting that needs painting, the blog that needs blogging, the....

Well, you get the picture.

Relaxation is something I'm learning though. It's taking time and is a bit of a stop-start process. It involves painting fence posts very slowly, white and blue alternately, making sure the paint never touches the sides. It involves slowly descending staircases to a place where I am totally comfortable, a mobile home by the sea, warm with a stove and low maintenance with the sound of waves and a decent rum to sip. It involves recognising that I can be kind to myself and that there is no need to beat myself up, realising my best is good enough even if I will never be Dali. It involves imagining a tall building... a skyscraper somewhere..... at night.... it has ten floors... and each floor is lit up... and with each breath out... I count aloud from ten down to one ... and with each breath out... one floor of that building goes dark.... from the top down.... and as I breath out... as each floor goes dark.... those numbers begin to disappear until I just can't find the next number... and each breath out takes me down and down... deeper and deeper... darker and darker.... it's good... and each breath out can make me so relaxed... so comfortable...

It involves trying to do small things that make me feel good each day. Kind words, small acts, recognitions, smiles, helping. Seeing the world the way that I want to see it, not the way it wants me to see it.

I'm learning, slowly but surely I'm learning. Time to take my socks off I think.

Spindel by Hannah...

2011-11-01T18:10:00.003Z

Remember this guy?

Yes it’s Spindel the donkey - well almost donkey, as you know he has the udder of a cow courtesy of an orange rubber glove. Spindel was the creation of Hannah, Number 2's (RickShore) very creative daughter.

Yesterday Hannah sent me this fantastic drawing of Spindel. I was amazed by the detail she’d put into it and the skill with which she’d drawn it. There’s the orange rubber glove udder, the spiky purple ball nose, the yellow sponge face, and yellowish plastic bag main – she’s even got the blue rope on his back.

Spindel alive on the page for all to see – 2 photos 16p or 10 photos for a pound. Hannah’s an astute business woman too.

It’s been a while now since I wandered down Criccieth beach and I’m missing it, but Hannah’s drawing brought it all back to me. What fun and frustration we had that day, building a donkey from beach flotsam and jetsam. A happy few hours spent as a child, with children young and old, and at the end of it Spindel the donkey standing proud for all to see.

I’ve dreamt of Spindel a couple of times since then. Once he was a smugglers donkey with kegs of brandy on his back and I was his pirate captain - ‘Shiver me timbers and pieces of eight. Splice the main brace, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum – hic!’

Another time he was wandering on the beach alone at night and I was following. The stars were bright and he seemed to be heading towards the brightest one of all. I’m not sure where we were going but I knew I’d be happy when we got there.

And he’s out there somewhere still I think, on Criccieth beach, waiting for me to come back, maybe he’ll let me climb onto his back and take me off to that special place where I’ll be happy again.

Thanks Hannah. It’s a magical picture, Spindel’s a magical donkey, and you made him happen. I'll have to think of a way to repay you for the smiles you've brought me.

Follow your star.

Pumpkin carving...

2011-10-31T18:33:00.007Z

I never know what it is going to be until I pick up the knife and spoon and begin - the knife to slash, the spoon to scoop the gooey innards out.

I keep the seeds, I keep the flesh - for salted roasted pumpkin seeds and creamy pumpkin soup, after all waste not want not.

I considered a scream but Edvard Munch escaped me. I thought about a Lovecraftian horror but his Necrominicon was firmly closed. Even Bram Stoker slunk away - no, this year I had a humour on me. Not for me the grotesque of the vampyre teeth and drooling, bloody, mouth.

So here is my pumpkin for Halloween 2011.

I'm not sure if it's a cat or a rabbit. I think it owes something to Donny Darko but there's something of the Bagpuss about him. His eyes are glass his horns a pound shop bargain. Perhaps he isn't very scary, but the most horrible terrors lurk beneath a silly surface sometimes.

Anyway, I have to go... the trick or treaters are here. I hope they are careful - he might nibble them to death.

Pumpkin patch...

2011-10-30T18:06:00.004Z

We took a drive out Warrington way today, avoiding the motorways, taking the toll bridge, dodging the storm clouds, watching the racing clouds.

Halloween weather, well it's that time of year.

A black cat hissed at us from the side of the road, a scarecrow waved a bony hand from a field full of pumpkins.

As we drove along the country roads I was surprised at how many farms were selling pumpkins along the way. Time was when the only way you could get a pumpkin was to grow it yourself, these days they seem to be everywhere. The supermarkets are full of them, huge crates stacked ten deep, all competing for the pumpkin carver’s pound.

We stopped at one of the farms and bought our pumpkin. They had dozens around the back in a shed, goodness knows what they’ll do with them once tomorrow has gone – pumpkin soup and pie I guess.

We plan to carve it tomorrow. I’ll let you see how it turns out.

Tales from the glass painter's table - Elvis

2011-10-28T20:22:00.009+01:00

Baby let me be
Your loving teddy bear

Put a chain around my neck
And lead me anywhere

Oh let me be

Your teddy bear

Not the first Elvis glass I've painted but the other one was Elvis in his white suit persona and cartoony, whilst this is the Elvis I think I prefer to remember. Elvis the rebel, Elvis the heartthrob, Elvis the wiggling hipped, smouldering, sex machine.

Not that I'm a huge Elvis fan, but there is something about that early Elvis that captures the musical and cultural changes that were coming. Don't worry about the purple eye shadow, Elvis only wore it for fun. He was no Little Richard.

Another day, another glass.

Happy 5oth birthday somebodies mum. Hope you like the glass.

Uh, hu, hu - Thank you M'am.

Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has now left the building...