Market Research

A woman from the suburbs of Delhi rings with a number of consumer based questions. They are mostly about home insulation and utilities providers. I've already got insulation. 'Thats a no then' she says. She asks about my income bracket and how many times a year I go on a foreign holiday. More than four times a year? Less than four times a year? 'Once every four years' I reply.
'Thats a no then.' I can tell she doesn't believe me. 'And who do you book your holidays with?' 'No one' I say 'we just turn up'. Just turn up? Who is your holiday provider?' 'Me' I say. 'We just go to a campsite and pitch the tent.' 'A no then.' 'Yes' I say and she gives a stifled giggle conscious of the fact that if I possibly complain about her rude guffaws she will lose her job and not be able to pay for her children's school fees, nutrition, medical treatment or the roof over their heads. How can that be a holiday, she is thinking.... I think of the Pakistan flood. Suddenly a weekend's camping in a rainy field in Kent seems sad, sick and completely insane.....

What Can Possibly Go Wrong ?

Apart from the climate and world economy.... In a very parochial way -
quite a lot. And it all seems to happen in the last week of the holidays
when panic rises regarding imminent lack of free time or being able to
ever think one's own tiny thoughts again until half term.

First the internet is down. We need a new rooter (little red rooter).
Distraught at lack of access to social networking the kids make
a zombie movie. I have a cameo role as a member of the undead
breaking into the house, because actually in real life the door
handle is broken. "Help it's a very coordinated zombie" I shuffle
towards them, ketchup covered, clutching a screwdriver. Multi tasking,
I manage to complete a DIY job WHILST entertaining four twelve year olds.

Then some more pre termtime tension due to urgent need to contact
the Inland Revenue about a form left unsent... The phone is dead.
Turns out a zombie melted the cable in the panini press darling.

We return to our cardboard box after visiting the mansion of our
country cousins... The lamb was delicious we all agree, gagging on
another tuna pasta. Why do we think we can afford to go on a three grand
skiing holiday with them when bits of rusty metal-mimicking plastic are
beginning to break off the car and it stinks like an oil refinery?
Why don't they just come camping with us and save £ 2900? The question
hangs in the lavender and beeswax scented air and remains mysteriously
unanswered.


I try and sign in to blogger after many months away. It does a
Martin Guerre on me and I have to re establish my entire personality,
thereby wasting precious time I could be using to mend the cracked
bathroom basin. In denial people still use the basin, the ensuing drool
collecting underneath in a small plastic camping cereal bowl......

The borrowed guinea pig is beginning to sneeze in the August Monsoon.
Could be the first line of a poem I don't have time to write.
But it isn't.
I still have to gloss paint the outside window frames.....

Infrequent book reviews

On my way to Ch***** School yesterday, having volunteered to run the cloak room for Quiz Night, I see a dead cat on the pavement. One of of it's eyeballs is hanging out. I absolutely know it was hit by a car not bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat by a Ch***** student. 'American Psycho' springs to mind. A nasty book written by a nasty man (Brett Easton Ellis) but with a sense of humour. The two are not incompatible. I would only ever read this book to examine the craft of writing. And then only once as it is so poisonous.

Another book about nutcases is 'Human Traces'(Sebastian Faulks). My definition of a good book is that you wish you'd written it. The man has a mind like a Victorian library, full of musty reminiscing. Hallucinating history. Yes there is imagination - but it is rooted in the vernacular. Yes, flashes of visionary brilliance but they are deeply conservative. It's an endlessly corduroy astounding feat of fogeyish intrigue. Very educational factually but there's a lot of it. Rather puffed up and schoolmasterish. And no, I don't wish I'd written it.
I probably wouldn't invite these two to a dinner party.....

Minimal but startling is good. Ann Enright is great for this. Energetic, surprising - often poetic. Minxish and life affirming. I would happily to do an egg on toast for her and for Ernest Hemingway....should he be wandering this way. Looking for a cat or some other dumb animal to shoot.

So, keep reading folks. Books don't crash like computers.

What people did before computers

Not Wearing Rose Coloured Spectacles

Erm what's happened to the last few years.
They seem to have shrivelled up. My friends, some of them,
have retained a bone structure upon which to hang their
marshmallowed sagging jowells and look rather distinguished.
Me, I look like a potato. Pale and mottled with whiskery bits. If I dressed
in sacking I'd be chips before I knew it
It's not helpful if you want to be taken seriously. I have chicken's
hands. Yet I can still run about on Peckham Rye like an escaped Ostrich.
Across field and dale with no regard for wet or cold. The Marathon glory is years behind. Yet remains a possibility. Well - this is on a bad day. On that same bad day I entered my home and the term Crack Den sprang to mind. Was it the shredded carcase of a lampshade, revealing it's dreary low wattaged eco innards. Was it the Empty Quarter of the living room devoted entirely to bikes, skateboards, spanners and old socks (that had been used to clean the former). Possibly it was the kitchen floor. Plastic wood. There but for the grace of god - and held together by patches of gaffer tape. Or was it the stair carpet - with the colour, texture and smell of a long dead Labrador. It could have been the cobwebby bookshelf with orange Penguin Classics and a foxed, leather bound Shakespeare that in any one else's house would have vintage chic but in mine are just old. Perhaps it was the rest of the family, wan in the gloom, dressed in a selection of still muddy football kits - or the repellent combination of dressing gown-over-clothes. "Put on a jumper for goodness sake". This is a look that stems from the wearer's slug days in a damp Glasgow hovel. Pot of tea with a stained cosy and a pipe of something. Lentils in the cupboard. Down to the garage at 4.00 am for a packet of skittles. Actually it is much colder in Scotland and everyone wears dressing gowns and woollen tights and dresses (even the men), nearly all the time. When R visited last week from the Highlands she could barely walk through being weighed down by tweed. I had to push her round in a shopping trolley. Up to the West End. Down the Burlington Arcade to the Royal Academy in her Tam'O'shanter. Searching in the Wallace Collection for Damien and his sixth form skull that grinned smugly across the gallery at the Laughing Cavalier.

It pleases me. The revelation that TS Eliot "wrote nothing whatsoever for three years"... and saw "no immediate likelihood" of doing it. "The writing of poetry takes time and I never have any time." It makes me feel OK about the hours spent sorting pants. Or pondering the Zen of a 'buy one get one free' pack of granary baps that would do for packed lunch, in Somerfield - when only one is left. I feel lucky. He had to struggle in a suit. He would have welcomed a murky room full of bikes and the accompanying enthusiasm for them. I see mess. He would have seen the manifestation of creativity and I'm sure would have been liberated by Lycra. Oops - watch out for that tool box Tom. He would have felt the poetry in a half eaten tin of anchovies lending their aroma to some quark in the fridge. The chaos of rushing hither and thither - he would stay for coffee and stir it thoughtfully. He would use the imagery of vanilla pods sinking in a panacotta - rather than cry about it. Not that I've ever made one or cried about it. I leave that for the next phase of existence. Along with cycle touring in Spain and skate boarding up mountains. And writing poetry, innit.

Camping Colours

Uncivilised Camping (get your copy here)

We'd been in the wilderness living like iron age tramps.
Except they probably had a table.

We had an uneasy combo of nylon, candles, paraffin and pyromaniac kids.
We were the only family who ate left over noodles for breakfast.

We were the noisiest. The person who painted her nails to come camping also had Blair Witch hysteria in the woods when searching for sticks, then bug in-sleeping-bag-wobblers at 4.00 am. None of them went near a badminton racquet or played a nice organised game of cricket. Instead they found an old door full of rusty nails to play 'a game that I invented but it's already been invented'. You rest the middle on a log, stand on one end and get some bigger heavier people to jump on the other end. Then you get catapulted up to heaven.

We made lots of fires and burnt all sorts of stuff. We didn't sit behind our wind break in green canvas chairs because we haven't got any. We cooked at ground level. We made muddy coffee in a pan. We drank red wine from tin mugs then we played raucous guitar in the dark. Then there was this rope swing....

We didn't bring our Xbox and portable TV but we laughed rudely within earshot at those who did.

We hung our pants out to dry on the fence.

We very soon had the entire campsite to ourselves....

Rome Domes, Columns and Arches

So here he is. An old man who wears his trousers rolled - if only for
cycling. At 50.

Here we are on a birthday trip. Sitting on the Spanish Steps suddenly burning under the same unfiltered sun as Caesar, Caligula, Hadrian, Nero...and all those other bling covered fated genius nutcase despots. Huge, everything. The legacy of their egos is still astounding. In the Colosseum Russell Crowe winces as metal clashes and glints. He squints at the soft robed Emperor. He wrestles with tigers.

Saints have been carved. Gods have been carved. The gods have become saints. Writhing on the banks of the Tiber, a mess of Tritons, sea gods and odd looking fish. In St Peter's, in a space really nearly as big and planned as some people's kitchens round here, shrouded Madonnas lean out of the dusk. Living liquid marble billowing like silk.

High Renaissance nonsense cascades in a gold swarm of cherubs from Bernini's altarpiece. Everywhere bluish stained glass light. Candles illuminate a row of Popes. The priest emerges from the multi lingual confession box, choking on his dog collar....The nun in supplication palms clasped, slyly checks her BlackBerry. Emails from Jesus. A trillion years of religious hysteria. You could cut the air with a candelabra.

Scorched and blistered we pour water on our heads in the shade of another stone church. Traffic hums around the piazza. Richard Scarry mousemobiles. Scooters appear from nowhere, rumbling trivially over the tarmac skin of doomed, buried civilisation. How could you even wield a hammer in this heat - let alone conquer continents.

It's a short trip but cold beers and pizza are swallowed as the world turns on it's axis and A contemplates his miniscule previous five decades - and those yet to come.

Enclosed within the Colosseum's arches, vaulted like the dead sockets of a gladiator's skull, we reflect on the legacy of those gaudy emperors. Pomposity and amnesia. In the garden of broken columns and climbing weeds, an American woman rests her head on a slab of marble and sleeps.

Beatnik Sunday w/rain and fridge magnets......

Loom through morning miasma
to cool glass drying freely
with harmony and hug

Me to canvas could scream
like instrument dazzle

Wild shopping
Absurd original drunk fashion

Coffee lunch full of blue ink

Purple silhouette almost
like metal water

Smoke dust
Make more neo electric
psychedelic sculpture

Cheer up luv...

April is The Cruellest Month....

After many moons another blog. Not because there's been nothing to say - just that the effort required to book space on the computer means I now write on the back of an envelope instead of on the back of the internet. Same difference.

So here we are five months later. In a pixilated economy, with our new best friend Obama trying to tidy it all up and re-freeze the ice caps like lime flavoured ice pops after they'd left the fridge door open. Increasingly I'm feeling like I'm in a really bad disaster movie. For instance, only last night my neighbour knocked on the door with reports of a smell of gas rising through the pavement. Stand back it's gonna blow. Soon the house was swarming with fluorescent jackets and bleeping bleepers. We'll be back in half an hour to drill up the pavement they said at 11.30 pm on a Friday night. A decided to have a bath before they switched everything off. Went to turn it on. A beer and a little look at a bicycle parts website later.......Drip drip drip. His bath had come to him. Through the kitchen ceiling next to the light socket. Stand back it's gonna blow. But no. They couldn't afford the special FX, so all that happened was we mopped the floor and the gas people drilled two tiny holes outside then drew yellow chalk round them.

Vacuuming dust coils from around drum kit in boys room I muse upon missing Trivial Pursuit cards and Teenagers Lost Watch. Recent sleuthings convince me that watch has been sold and cards have been used for roaches. Dare not mention to A who is is now the Dad from Quadrophenia despite his Irvine Welsh Glasgow years. Raise loose floorboards searching for stash and own lost marbles.

In this fickle time between winter and sun, April is chucking cold blossom on the pavement. The small children are big. And the eldest is away to the woods. A mental spring clean. A paradigm shift. Remembering always that truth is stranger than fiction. Remembering to look - but not too closely. Clean those windows.

I think I have to go. And it will be more Shawshank Redemption than The Great Escape.
(3 film - and 2 literary references in one blog indicate a winter of hibernation.)

Pick n Mix

As the four boys relaxed in the luxurious crumb upholstered
interior of the speeding Peugeot 406 estate, the talk was of the
morning's football...'What a goal!' exclaimed L, his flinty
gaze alert under a superficially relaxed stance.

'Don't look now but we've got company' murmured B.
I took a sharp right - careering through a shop front and winding
up in a deserted carpark. 'I think we've lost them' said J through
gritted teeth.'Can't believe you have to pay to park on a Sunday though'
grunted L.' We don't' said B as he brought down the parking meter in a
hail of bullets. 'Make it snappy guys - the film starts in five'.

The agents honed bodies tensed for action.'They've tracked my phone.
They know we're here. Quick. The roof!' Expertly they scaled the wall,
bounding across the tiles to the Peckham Multiplex - sending several
lumps of Deco architecture crashing to the pavement in the process.

Meanwhile the mysterious leather gloved Mr X intercepted the coded
message on the abandoned phone:
'Will u b home 4 t?'

J clutched the bullet wound on his arm 'Are we gonna make it?'
'It'll be tight- but if we don't pull this one we'll staying in at playtime. Forever!' B was ashen as they approached the kiosk. Fingers crossed. Here we go.
'Four children and one adult please' said J firmly. Minutes seemed
like a lifetime as they waited for the hungover-looking youth to print out the tickets....

J didn't flinch as he felt the inevitable muzzle of a gun in his back.
'Ah Mr Bond' purred a chillingly familiar voice...'It seems you have
forgotten your Pick n Mix....'

(To be continued........)

It's Closer Than You Think.

Feathers Ruffled

This week I joined the online discussion forum for local residents.

Like Caspar Hauser on a bad hair day, I wandered through the creaky door of this virtual village pub and everything went quiet....

A slightly obtuse statement endorsing a friend's new retail venture resulted in accusations of fraud and me being blocked from the site. People suspected I was the self promoting owner of the business. I had seriously breached the etiquette. The hostility my comment generated was amazing, even when it became clear I was unconnected to the owner.

In this cultural melting pot new tribes are still developing, both virtually and in Real Life. Tight little communities with their own rules, rituals and language. And I had spoken the wrong language...

So I apologise unreservedly to all those affected or offended...
Please accept 3 cows, a goat, and 2 Nintendogs.

Hey kids remember this day. Er.. mum wasn't it that other guy?

Cildo Meireles:Something Fishy at The Tate Modern