Butterflies and bastards…

An eventful week; it started well enough with sightings of a peacock butterfly basking in the sunshine on the paving at the front of my house and a brief and spirit-lifting glimpse of bright yellow as a brimstone butterfly fluttered along like a sunny-day smile on our suburban street.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a brimstone, not for a few years at least. Since then though the sun has gone back into the cloud and I didn’t despite trying so hard.

Then today that puddled man-boy poking me in my forehead repeatedly, long and hard, mad eyes flashing fire, threats of beatings. I didn’t run and I didn’t stand down I’m proud to say, but I’m not proud of letting it go in my usual way. Sunshine on the paving at the front of my house and a brief and spirit-lifting glimpse of bright yellow as a brimstone butterfly fluttered along like a sunny-day smile on our suburban street. I can’t remember the last time I saw a brimstone, but I didn’t run and I didn’t stand down.

‘What’s my problem?’ Well, in answer to that oafish question oaf, I can’t tolerate the type of injustice that sickly boy of yours dishes out – stamping on every butterfly he sees, congratulating himself for making the world black with his loathing, and you condoning it… chip and block comes to mind – you nightmares.

Back in the long ago when the air was full of butterflies all summer I wouldn’t have let it go I think. Lots of butterflies then – blues, browns, reds, oranges – these days it’s unusual to see even a cabbage white. But at least I can see the butterflies, appreciate their beauty and charm, know how to let their wings lift me and take me back to other, better days - at least I can put all this into words.

He’s just a thug, a bullying stupid thug and perhaps I would have let it go even back then.

Well maybe. You nightmares.

So, two butterflies on a warm march day. It has to be a good omen.

1,000 - and I missed it...

I missed it. I knew that I would. My thousandth post came and went without me noticing and here I am on post 1,005.

What can I say, other than I missed it.

I missed it.

At this point I guess I should write something about my thousandth post, but I can hardly spell it let alone write about it and in any case is post number one thousand really so very different from post number one or post number one hundred and eleven or even seven hundred and twenty-seven? Are any of my posts so very different from each other?

I guess despite the variety of subject, ultimately my posts are all the same – they all about me. And just how do I feel about that? Well. it is all that I know really. Isn't it all that any of us really know?

Message from the FBI...

Well, I was going to write something around this e-mail I received yesterday but I don’t feel that I need to... just read it. This one’s quite well written for a change.

PS – I love the last line.

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

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Counter-terrorism Division and Cyber Crime Division
J. Edgar. Hoover Building Washington DC
ROBERT S. MUELLER,

Attention Beneficiary,

Records show that you are among one of the individuals and organizations who are yet to receive their overdue payment from overseas which includes those of Lottery/Gambling, Contract and Inheritance. Through our Fraud Monitory Unit we have noticed that you have been transacting with some impostors and fraudsters who have been impersonating the likes of Prof. Soludo /Mr. Lamido Sanusi of the Central Bank Of Nigeria, Mr. Patrick Aziza, Bode Williams, Frank, Anderson, none officials of Oceanic Bank, Zenith Banks, Kelvin Young of HSBC, Ben of FedEx, Ibrahim Sule, Dr. Usman Shamsuddeen and some impostors claiming to be The Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Cyber Crime Division of the FBI gathered information from the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC) on how some people have lost outrageous sums of money to these impostors. As a result of this, we hereby advise you to stop communication with any one not referred to you by us. We have negotiated with the Federal Ministry of Finance that your payment totaling $5,900,000.00(Five Million Nine Hundred Thousand Dollars). will be released to you via a custom pin based ATM card with a maximum withdrawal limit of $15,000 a day which is powered by Visa Card and can be used anywhere in the world where you see a Visa Card Logo on the Automatic Teller Machine (ATM).

We guarantee receipt of your payment. This is as a result of the mandate from US Government to make sure all debts owed to citizens of American and also Asia and Europe which includes Inheritance, Contract, Gambling/Lottery etc are been cleared. Below are few list of tracking numbers you can track from Delivery Company website to confirm people like you who have received their payment successfully.

Name LINDBERG:DHL Tracking Number 1426425615 (www.dhl.com)
Name :PITELIS :UPS Tracking Number h8433223480 (www.ups.com)
Name: GERALD D. WARNER FedEx Tracking number 875777537332 (www.fedex.com)

To redeem your funds, you are hereby advised to contact the ATM Card Center via email for their requirement to proceed and procure your Approval of Payment Warrant and Endorsement of your ATM Release Order on your behalf which will cost you $200 Usd only and nothing more as everything else has been taken care of by the Federal Government including taxes, custom paper and clearance duty so all you will ever need to pay is $200.00 only.

Mr. Luis Kally(ATM Card Center Director)
Central Bank of Nigeria
Central Business District,
Cad astral Zone, federal
Capital Territory,
Nigeria.
ATM Card Center Director Mr. Luis Kally
Email: fbi_office@yahoo.cn
Phone: +234-80-88-656-777.

Do contact Mr. Luis Kally of the ATM Card Center via his contact details above and furnish him with your details as listed below:

FULL NAMES: __________________________________
DELIVERY ADDRESS FOR ATM CARD: __________________
SEX: _______________
DATE OF BIRTH: __________________
OCCUPATION: __________________
TELEPHONE NUMBER: _____________________
EMAIL ADDRESS: _____________________

On contacting him with your details your file would be updated and he will be sending you the payment information in which you will use in making payment of $200.00 via Money Gram or Western Union Money Transfer for the procurement of your Approval of Payment Warrant and Endorsement of your ATM Release Order, after which the delivery of your ATM card will be effected to your designated home address without any further delay, extra fee.

ROBERT S. MUELLER,
DIRECTOR
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20535

Note: Disregard any email you get from any impostors or offices claiming to be in possession of your ATM card, you are hereby advice only to be in contact with Mr. Luis Kally of the ATM card center who is the rightful person to deal with in regards to your payment and forward any emails you get from impostors to this office so we could act upon it immediately. Help stop cyber crime.

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The money is on it's way....

How Earth got its name...

I guess everybody in the country has been snapping Jupiter and Venus over the last few weeks, so I decided that I wouldn’t be any different. Of course I missed them when they were really close together, a combination of cloudy skies and stupidity, but now that we have the crescent moon it remains a sight worth seeing – Venus glowing bright above and Jupiter a tiny spec in the bottom right.

Of course I’ve been watching them as they hang all a glow in the night sky. ‘Planets not stars’ I keep correcting myself and others. Jupiter will be gone soon but Venus is going to hang around for a while I’ve read, and somewhere out there in the eastern evening sky Mars is visible, a bright reddish-orange orb. I’ve not seen it of course, I can’t find my compass to find which way I should be looking and even if I did it would have to be pretty obvious – I’m no astronomer I’m afraid.

Venus, Mars, Jupiter and the rest – the Roman gods of our solar system… and here we are on Earth. I wonder who named the Earth and where the name came from?

Perhaps in the dim and distant past two of our equally dim and distant ancestors got together and perhaps one said “What shall we call this thing we are standing on?” and perhaps the other replied “Errr thingy.” And over the years Errthingy got shortened to Erth and then the French (who very much enjoy their vowels) came along and stuck an ‘a’ in the middle of it to make it a little Frenchier - and voila… Earth!

Yes, that was probably it - the French... I might have guessed it.

With Weird and Gilly...

He played guitar didn’t he?

He did - jamming good with Weird and Gilly - two of Bowie's band mates in The Spiders From Mars: bassist Trevor Bolder (he of the magnificent sideburns) and drummer Woody Woodmansey.

Oh, what a day in 1972 when 15 year old me was first blown away by this album. My hair turned bright red almost overnight as Noddy Holder’s mirrored top hat was forgotten and Marc Bolan’s satin jacket was flung deep into my wardrobe never to be seen again.

Suddenly I was born anew, and all because of an album cover of a pretty thing in an electric blue jumpsuit and boxing boots. Discos at the youth centre would never be the same again. How well I remember gazing at that hand coloured over-exposed image. Where had he come from... Mars?

I knew every inch of that street on that cover. I could smell the slight rot of the rubbish, knew what was going on in every lighted room and what was going on in the darkness of the others. I'd sat in each car parked by the curbside, pushed in their cigarette lighters and lit a Gauloise from each of them, coughing on the dry, perfumed, French tobacco fumes. I'd walked through that tall green door a thousand times, up the grimy wooden stairs, visiting every business announced on those rain drenched signs outside - tailors and theatrical agents, publishers and poets, furriers and photographers and whores.

I poured over that sleeve for hours, so many hours that I became Ziggy sometimes - making love with my ego, becoming that special man, making them my band.

Heddon Street in central London is very trendy now but back then it was rubbish strewn and ratty and on that cold, wet, January night Bowie must have been freezing when photographer, Brian Ward, who was shooting pictures of the band in his crummy photographic studio above, persuaded Bowie to step outside for a frame or two. Of course Weird, Gilly and poor old Mick Ronson thought it was too cold and didn’t join him for the picture. The rest as they say is pop history and I was never the same again.

The reason for this post is that today, forty years on (yes, forty years!) Ziggy is to have a plaque dedicated to him on Heddon Street – and why not? After all, he was the Starman who took it all too far… but boy could he play guitar.

I wonder what the alternative sleeve would have been – spider from mars maybe?

Reverie...

No, not a painting - well, not one I've made - and not water either. Simply the play of sunshine through the front door glass on the ceiling of our hall this evening. It caught me up in a reverie as I stood watching the play for a few minutes.

A COBOL JIM - JAB COOL I'M - LAB COO JIM - JACM BOLO I - JACM LOBO I - COAL JOB I'M - COLA JOB I'M - MAC JOB OIL - CAM JOB OIL - JAM COBOL I - JAM COB OIL - JAM LIB COO - LAO COB JIM - AM JOB COIL - AM JOB LOCI - AM JOB CLIO - MA JOB COIL - MA JOB LOCI - MA JOB CLIO

Let's just call it a chant to go with the bay leaves in my shoes shall we.

Sixty minutes in time...

So there goes that hour again, it catches me every year; not that I forget to reset the clocks, but for the rest of the day at least - I’m running late. It’s only sixty minutes, but what a difference those sixty minutes make and throughout the day I find myself returning to that same old question – where have those sixty minutes gone?

I fell asleep with that thought flying through my mind like birds last night. Long before the official o'clock for the putting forward of time, my clocks were already changed in anticipation. 'Where have all those sixty minutes gone?' I thought as my eyes closed heavy with the lead of the day.

Almost at once I was standing in front of a long brick wall on which somebody had painted, in huge white letters: ‘waste daylight at your peril’.

Men in grey coveralls, weaved in and out of laughing children riding bicycles, boys in grey shorts and green pullovers, girls in candy striped frocks.

A siren sounded -‘Inside! Inside!’ the coveralled men began to shout, pulling on gas masks with clock-faces where the glass eyes should have been. Suddenly doors, which had been invisible until that moment, slid open in the long brick walls as the children furiously rode their bikes inside, the men following up behind. "Move along, move along."

And then the doors slid shut and from a speaker high above a man’s voice warned ‘three minutes until the hour is lost. Seek shelter if you haven’t already.”

I was getting worried, the clouds overhead were darkening, the breeze - warm only a few moments before - had turned into a cool wind. There was a hum in the air. I ran down a dark alley towards the harbour, a yacht was moored besides the harbour wall. “Wait for me! Wait for me!” I cried to the two men struggling to pull up the anchor. I ran towards the gangplank but as I got there the anchor came up and the yacht rose quickly into the air, straight up into the clear black sky, barely missing a passing passenger jet, leaving the gang plank to clatter to the quayside below.

The sky was lead, the hum a screaming roar - and then it stopped.

Black iridescent feathers began to fall from the sky as I trembled and then awoke to the sound of flapping wings.