Heart of glass...

This is not an advertisement

I lied. Actually it is.

I don’t know if you knew this but one of the ways I spend (waste) my time is by painting glass. I’ve been doing it for years and used to sell the odd glass in my much beloved kiosk on Bangor Pier in North Wales.

I gave up the kiosk a few years ago but I’m still painting glass. I enjoy the challenge of lining the images and writing the messages, then carefully flooding and flowing the blended paints, highlighting my creations with iridescent pigment kindly brought back from the States by friends as you can’t get them in the UK.

When I’ve finished painting I bake the glass to fuse the pigment to the glass and make it fully washable.

Wine glasses, beer glasses, cocktail glasses, tumblers, vases, tealight holders – whatever you'd like and personalised should you want it.

But enough of that. Just look at the pictures you’ll get the idea.

I'm going to use Friday to show you some of my glass. I hope that you like it, and if you want me to make you something just let me know. I'd be happy to paint it for you.

Woodcuts, drawings, and the illustrated man…

Waking up as a woodcut was just fine, almost expected really what with all the woods I’d not been able to see for the bloody trees recently.

It was the goldfish that bothered me. Just how the hell had a goldfish got into my mouth whilst I was sleeping and where the bloody hell was my tongue? And isn’t that a koala next to that damned fish?

How Kafkaesque. You go to bed as one thing and wake up as another.

I guess when you live in a comic book world becoming an illustration is inevitable.

I’ve always been full of pictures, choc full, all wanting to be out and abroad – cats and dogs and houses and birds and monsters and clouds and the sea. Sometimes my fingers fly in the haste to let them out they shout so much. I call them doodles, but they are really thoughts, thoughts made real on paper, canvas, glass, sand, cardboard, old receipts, and junk mail.

I’ve been drawing all my life. I probably started in the womb, tracing patterns with my half formed fingers on my mother’s flesh. Sometimes I wonder if my marks remain like ancient cave drawings in the dark. I even have a full body tattoo. It's just hard to see because it is under my skin, etched there by my life.

We all start out as artists until one by one drop by the wayside as we convince ourselves the marks we make on paper aren’t the right ones and suddenly we can draw no longer.

Ask a room full of children to draw a house and they will, bold and brash and colourful, paying no attention to the reality of a house at all. Their houses come from their minds not from their eyes, they don’t care if the house they draw doesn’t look like a house. Why would they?

What pictures I have inside me - the illustrated man.

What pictures you have inside you.

Draw them.

Thought for the day…

I sometimes listen to thought for the day on the radio, positive tales from positive people who can take the most negative of subjects and turn them around so that by the time they’ve finished their five minute slot I’m left with an unexpected smile and a warm glow that isn’t explainable by booze. Well, not just booze alone.

These speakers seem to be able to put a shine on anything. Even death isn’t that bad once they’ve polished it up, pointing out that it’s the life lived that counts, not the ending; which is a little like saying that falling from a plane is a lot like flying – at least until you hit the ground.

I wonder what Death thinks about that as he wanders the world with his egg-timer and scythe? They say that all publicity is good publicity, but maybe Death would prefer not to have a positive spin put upon his life’s work – if that’s the applicable terminology for what Death does. Besides, maybe Death wants to be dreaded, perhaps that’s his preferred self-image, his raison-d’etre, the legend he’s built up over an infinite number of lunchtimes – supposing that Death does lunch.

By the way if you ever bump into Death and he mentions that ‘we must do lunch some time’ – run like hell.

And what about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - War, Famine, Pestilence, and er… Death again.

What do they think about each of their own particular brand of grey cloud being relined with a veneer of silver by some inspirational speaker on breakfast radio? I don’t think that Famine would be too keen, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t do breakfast, and I’m almost certain that War and Pestilence hardly ever remove their helmet visors and slip on a pair of rose tinted glasses. As for Death, well, I’ve already done Death to – um, death.

Mind you, as I’m back on the subject - interesting that Death works well both on his own and in a team. I hope he has that as a key skill on his curriculum vitae along with harvester of souls and ‘long grass scythed’. Well, it never does any harm to have a back-up plan just in case dieing should go out of fashion at some point. After all who knows what they’ll come up with next.

Now I’m sure that if you look hard enough you can see the positive in just about anything. But sometimes looking for the positive can be such a negative experience. Geeing yourself up to pretend that you really don’t mind all the disaster that’s happening to you because - ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ is so not so. My guess is that it all depends on your definition of strong. So if your definition of strong is a cringing, wobbly, sobbing, hysterical, ball of despondent, deflated, panic - then I guess that particular bon-mot might just work with me.

Anyway, here’s my thought for the day for all those multi-denominational, well prepared, positive spinners on morning radio. Please keep your positive thoughts to yourself, you may be about to cause Armageddon.

Spin that shit shiny if you can.

The mothly management meeting…

I found these three on my kitchen table, not really the best place to find a group of insects having a good old mandible wag, but rather than swat them I decided to listen in and become a human on the wall to find out just what went on at the insect management meeting.

The fly, the hover fly, and the moth gathered together for a meeting. No, they weren’t playing in the cup this week, nor were they in anybody’s soup, but the hover fly was buzzing to get on with it, the moth all of a flutter, and the fly – well he was in the chair, which was obviously a wing chair, so called the meeting to order.

First point on the agenda was sugar. There simply wasn’t enough of it around the house since the entire family had gone on a diet on the advice of the government who had declared everyone obese and hiked the price of all foods thus promoting good health, if you discounted those that starved. The hover fly suggested that one of them should speak to somebody about it, read the riot act perhaps, maybe the moth as he had no self interest in the sugar matter, preferring leaves of one type or another, and might be seen as neutral. After some protracted debate it was decided to park the issue, consider the best course of action, and carry it over to the next meeting.

‘Goodz stuffz!’ The fly buzzed proactively. Smiling his well practised smile, the one that if you peeped behind it was full of poison and disease.

Next point on the agenda was light. The moth complained that since the continued rise in electricity prices that electric lights were not being left on frequently enough. This meant that he had very little to be attracted to and therefore had lost all purpose, after all what is the point of life if there is no light to flutter around? Morale was definitely low, which would not be tolerated. It was agreed that somebody at some point would write a paper on this and bring it along to a future meeting probably as a three slide presentation containing a problem statement, an action plan, and a disclaimer disclaiming the problem statement and the action plan.

In the interim an announcement would be issued, distributed on flyers and the antranet communicating that morale was to rise by 86% (a figure that all three agreed was a jolly good one) from eleven the following morning.

‘Good work team.’ The hover fly declared. But then sucking up was in his nature, it was how he’d risen up through the ranks. After all, not so very long ago he was just another insect on the graduant scheme.

The final point on the agenda was the ‘meat of the matter’ as the fly, who had climbed his way to the top of the dung heap by doing what fly’s do best – talking and eating excrement, so succinctly put it. The fly, the hover fly, and the moth talked around this meaty matter for forty minutes or so until deciding that none of them really understood the issue well enough to draw any conclusions on either what the matter with meat was, or if meat were matter at all. It was decided to invite a vegetarian and a particle physicist along to the next meeting as Highly Paid Consultants to shed some light on the subject. This of course set the moth off talking about agenda point two again, declaring that if only there was some light to be had he’d be happy and the hover fly asked if there were any biscuits and they all got on to the sugar thing again.

The poor moth fluttered on with his argument, knowing that he was no match for these two, wishing for the days when all of the management team were moths.

‘I agree.’ He said, although in his fluttering mothy heart he knew that he didn’t and worse still he knew, that they knew, that he didn’t.

And so it went on for hour after hour, the three of them debating and arguing the issues, going off at tangents, and grinding their own particular tiny insect axes to absolutely no avail and with no conclusion whatsoever until AOB (Any Old Bullshit) was reached.

It seems to me that insects aren’t as clever as they are cracked out to be, not even when they hold high flying management positions. They’re all buzz and no action, they flit around from one thing to another and despite their 360 compound eye view of the world they really don’t seem to see very clearly at all.

Just like people really.

Maybe I should have swatted them when I had the chance.

Meeting closed.
Date of next meeting: Whenever.

How you gonna have a dream...

Where would we be without our dreams?

A friend of mine sent me this picture as a reminder that shadows aren't always murky places and in many ways it is where are dreams come from.

Where would I be without my dreams?

Oh, I’m not talking about those dreams that I have most nights. The ones where I’m lost in a strange city with no money and I’ve lost my laptop, or the one where I’m locked out of my room in a big hotel and I suddenly realise that I’m completely naked. I’m not even talking about the one where I’m lost on Mars with a thirsty creature stalking me for my moisture. No, I’m talking about the dreams that I had when I still believed that all of my dreams would come true.

My dream as a boy was to become a successful artist. I was going to say famous but fame equates to celebrity these days and at no time did I ever want to be a celebrity.

Of course I didn’t become famous, and whilst I doodle and sometimes attempt something a bit more ambitious my conscience won’t allow me to describe myself as an artist. Well, not in the way I dreamt of being an artist with a garret high above the smoking chimneys of Paris, my brilliant canvasses stacked ten deep against the wall, smoking a Gauloise as I paint a voluptuous reclining nude, twiddling my beret for luck, splashing paint here, chucking paint there...

I think that there may even have been a time in my very early teens when I dreamt of being a film star, I guess everyone does. But by the time I’d grown there wasn’t much call for trench-coated gumshoes in a black and white world and besides with my looks I was more suited to playing the villain. Sadly I never did get a part in any of the school plays, only the very pretty and wealthy ever did at my school, so my acting dreams were dissipated even before I had a chance to dream them let alone make them a reality.

My dreams were never big despite what my dad said, and I never did get that beach buggy or illustrate a children’s book. Perhaps that was the problem - perhaps my dreams just weren’t big enough.

It all seems an awful long time ago now but some of my dreams did come true. Not the ones I’ve mentioned, but other dreams collected along the way. And of course I’ve had my share of dashed dreams and it never fails to surprise me how quickly a dream once attained can so easily becomes the norm and boring. Worse still is how some dreams become the stuff of nightmares with use and wear and experience.

I still have dreams though and I still chase them, albeit a little more slowly than I might once have, and I still hope that some of them come true.

So, where would I be without my dreams? Perhaps if I’d never dreamed I’d have become an accountant in a steady job and solid investments, or maybe I’d have joined the navy and seen the world, perhaps I might even have become the blacksmith I dream of being now. A life of honest toil and order, a quiet life without the need for dreams.

Back in the sock drawer…

Out with friends and colleagues last night. A year on. Exchanging tales and escapades, remembering japes and tragedies. Long gone, but still around clinging to the corners of our minds, meeting up for a few beers every now and then.

I wore my passes. Putting them on like a chain of office, a badge of authority to speed me on my way. I kidded them that I never take them off. In truth I haven’t worn them since my final day, lifting them over my head and burying them in my sock drawer, right at at the back, to be put away for ever.

Well, not quite. I put them on again as I left the house and strode down to the station to catch the tram to Manchester. How strange, as soon as they were on I felt like the me I was back then. That old me, the cheeky chappy, rude, and loud and always up for a laugh.

Tall tales, embellishments, and just a few white lies. Building the legend where none exists, gilding the lily that faded long ago.

A pigs ear from a silk purse.

Still, it was good to see the old faces. Not everyone was there, but they were remembered as we snatched back a few hours of our past. Good to put my identity back on for a while, wearing it like a mask and only taking it off when I arrived back home, peeling it from my face as I lifted my cards from around my neck.

It’s all there. On the memory stick that holds every report I ever wrote and the ninety thousand words of my novel - the one I began when I was so alone in Philadelphia. Those cards could open every door – Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Scarborough, Reading, Slough, King of Prussia, Cedar Rapids, Bangalore, and Hyderabad. The miles those cards have travelled, the plane rides they have taken – from Gracelands to Mysore, New York to Honfleur.

Me young to old, hair dark to grey, face planed to puffy.

Put back in the sock drawer.

It was good to see my friends last night.

Cheese and Bradbury…

I dream.

Sitting in my dining chair, clutching two skulls – one vaguely humanoid, the other definitely not. Phobos dimly illuminates the landscape around me as I sit somewhere on Mars, inflatable skeleton space suit, pointy head, and scared expression.

Something is crawling towards me across the red dust of the Martian surface. Something that I can’t quite make out as it moves between the rocks and rivulets left by the long past vanished Martian rain. There’s dust in my throat, red Martian dust. My mouth is dry. I'd give anything for a drop or two of that Martian water, anything.

There it is again. A glimpse of segmented body, the shimmer of light reflected on bloodied bone. Is that a slime trail? Can I really hear the clicking of dripping mandibles in the oxygen less air? Just how am I breathing? Am I breathing at all?

Am I already dead?

I dream on.

The lump-faced satellite in the empty sky above looks down seeing what I cannot see. I hear it searching, searching for something in this red desert, searching for something that it must have to stay alive.

And suddenly I know what it is searching for. It's looking for a drink, moisture - and the only moist thing around here is me.

I scream.