The Bullshitters.

  It was some years now since Melvin's father had announced that  he'd sired an illegitimate child and that he too was called Melvin - Melvin Snr! He was, apparently, a traffic policeman, but had been pensioned off after colliding with a civilian - or so the story went.
Melvin and his family (two sisters, one mother) hardly batted an eye lid, as his father, silent now, waited for a reaction, but was greeted with  expressions of ennui and resignation.
They were well used to his flights of fancy, his baroque braggadocio. Indeed this latest tale was rather pedestrian by his usual high standards. It seemed to Melvin rather lame, as if he'd exhausted his stash of infamy and was now reduced to plagiarising T.V.
One Christmas his father was going blind. Melvin remembered this little broadcast well, the family were preparing to eat the revered Christmas lunch, serried round the table, shoulder to shoulder like the Apostles in De Vinci's famous fresco.
  "Aye, I think I'm going blind as well..," he blurted to a dessicated aunt of uncertain age, Melvin thought it may well have been Agnes on her annual pilgrimage to drink, with able assistance from his father, deeply and with great conviction, the familial drinks cabinet dry.
Melvins mother who was in transit, carrying a large tureen of steaming vegetables, gasped and dropped her cargo to the floor, where brussels carrots and swede fell, scattering quite randomly. Melvin remained silent, as they all did, but he couldn't help noticing how the vegetables had formed themselves, to his eye, into a crude pastiche of famous painters styles: he perceived the intense and expressive brushwork of late van Gough as represented by the carrots, the brussels juxtaposed against the hideous carpet conjured De Kooning and as a whole the mushy tableau suggested Pollack. Melvin had been given a rather nice set of Windsor and Newton oil paints by Agnes as he recalled.
Another occasion and it was gout - Melvin began likening his father to a Biblical prophet such were the severity and frequency of his seemingly arbitrary afflictions.
  " Aye son, it's gout this time, Doctor Rouse reckons I might have to have the bugger off..!"
Poor Melvin had no idea what gout was, but it sounded pretty horrible: it rhymed with shout and clout and snout and doubt. But it surely couldn't be any worse than blindness or bastards.
  " Mum what's gout?" he asked his long suffering mother one day.
  "It's what you get when you tell too many lies."
  "Dad said he might have to have his leg off," countered Melvin.
  "Exactly," said his mother as she carried on putting crymplene jumpers into plastic bags and tossing them into a large box the size of a Morris Minor.
Lately however another rumour had come unbidden and unwelcome like a troupe of Romanian minstrels at the front door. This pertained to the imminent arrival of someone called " Uncle Charlie;" the provenance of which was of course totally open to conjecture, in the same way one may ponder the existence of the Yeti or flying saucers or alternative dimensions - which Melvin was convinced existed anyway: hadn't his father taken up permanent residence there long ago?
The idea of Uncle Charlie settled and fermented amongst the family; indeed the more these legends were repeated they took on more form, became more real by a process of osmosis. Charlie was being realised and his murky self began to hove into every ones consciousness; in the manner of a slowly developing photographic image. The Golem was fashioned from clay and  God breathed life into it, this was the same with Charlie only his substance was bullshit and Melvin's father was God.
Charlie had  apparently  emigrated to Australia without a penny to his name on the intriguing pretext that: "he had to get away.."
Uncle Charlie was not mentioned again, there was no point really - Melvin's father didn't bring the subject up, so why would anyone else and so he was left to disappear and recede: a hitchhiker in the rear view mirror.

Born Again?

 It was deep in the deep midwinter when old Michael was found frozen to the  bench in the park; stuck fast he was - frozen by the seat of his pants, firmly affixed by an involuntary discharge of bodily fluids. Later, after a passing jogger had raised the alarm, he was prised off like a horrible old gnarly limpet and conveyed to the morgue - where his cadaver took two days to thaw out.
It was obviously an accident (in the pants) that was waiting to happen and none of us were particularly surprised by the misadventure; his tragi-comic exit was an occupational hazard and no-one was immune. Were the winters getting colder or was it us getting older and more susceptible to the el fresco life? I think the truth lurks somewhere in between.
Michael's unfortunate passing, although heavily freighted with comic potential, reminded us all of the stark truth. There were indeed some who guffawed and chortled as to the nature of Michael's death, but we were all morbidly aware that we too could go the way of Michael:  fixed into place on a cold bench like an AirFix air-man.
So I thought of roaming further afield than the parameter's of our preferred frontiers - namely the park where Michael breathed his last and the off license. I looked at the park differently now and it seemed to have about it a mournful, despondent atmosphere  which was hardly surprising really. The trees and bushes which were once shelter, bereft of any foliage,now looked sinister. The branches and boughs were skeletal and seemed to be straining and stretching to be free of the frozen earth.
I needed to be away from the this cheerless place, despite the uncertainty that movement and a new surrounding would bring. I decided to walk towards the weakling sun, low in the sky, the colour of bitter lemon.
I drifted for many days, desultory and aimless, sleeping in the most incongruous places: the gable end of a bus shelter anyone or how about a derelict Transit van? However to call it a "van" would be far to grandiose, it would imbue the van with far too much glamour and allure. It was a shell; gutted and ripped and pillaged, it had been left on a scrap of wasteland, redundant and useless like some huge stone carried aloft on an ancient glacier and then deposited amongst the brambles and the rusty refuse.
I left the van to it's lonely decomposition after it became apparent that although fairly watertight and relatively draught free, when the sun rose in the morning and the temperature rose a little, and it didn't feel like my vital extremities were in danger of clanging to the frigid earth to lie amongst the dog shit and discarded Sun newspapers like relics from some antediluvian ice age, the condensation would melt showering me in liquid breath and physic fluid and sweat - the latter two being mutually exchangeable. Had it come to this, was my life so wretched, wasn't it desperate enough to wake up to the sight of an eviscerated dashboard, a mouldy, tatty "Magic Tree" hanging from the (broken) rear view mirror like an executed despot, well has it, has it..has it come to this... this baptism by breath?
Well actually, yes it has - you crazy, useless, dipsomaniac.

Vegetable Matters.

 " Meat, meat, meat, that's all we get these days.." Never was a truer word spoken in light of the unfortunate death of the vegetable; spoken as it was - with unerring predictability -  by one Albert Gizzard.
Gizzard eyed the tableau set upon the table with resigned hostility and pined for the day when  his meals were accompanied with a humble carrot or  perhaps a parsimonious parsnip or perhaps even a great dollop of mashed potato parked on his plate like a dollop of angel shit. Instead he had before him what looked like liver; the mass of monotone matter taunting him in it's ubiquity. Who'd have thought that life could become so dull post legume, he missed the delicate interplay of colours that the vegetable brought to the plate: the warm orange of the carrot set against the sporting green of the Brussels sprout had profound and beautiful resonances for him now. His reverie continued and he began to become nostalgic for the interesting contrast between shapes and texture; the gnarly phallus of the parsnip juxtaposed with the less endowed runner bean.
 The death of the vegetable had happened so suddenly and with out warning; signs and notices had appeared at local retailers and supermarkets across the land warning of a shortage of this or that, in fact  the first casualty had been the utilitarian potato. Government scientists had been brought in to investigate and with much umming and erring and grave sound bites they concluded that the potato, that staple, that national institution had been ravaged by some unknown blight - the symptoms of which were a rapid discoloration a wilting of leaves and an ignoble death.
Of course the logistical implications of this were huge: the diaspora of migrant eastern Europeans were laid off and so as well as being jobless had nothing to eat; chip shops became chop shops and the vegetarian lobby began crying - well, they began crying. Dark forces were suspected: alien bacteria, the impact of GM methods and practices, global warming, there was even a theory perpetrated by an obscure far right group who called themselves Das Boot, that it was a militant Muslim conspiracy, their dark scheme rendering the collective West constipated and in turn prone to  horrible cancers of the colon and anus. The Prime Minister  had assured his bloated public that this was "unlikely.."
After the potato, the blight was rapid and merciless in it's scope and the whole vegetable genus was eradicated. R.I.P.
As Gizzard sat upon his much put upon toilet bog, straining and groaning and pushing - his temples straining with the exertion, a thin bead of sweat probing his arse cheeks - he began wistfully recalling the happy times he'd spent on his allotment, tending his tomatoes, hoeing the earth in preparation for a fresh consignment of radish or leek, the wind in his face, muck caked to his wellies and callouses - oh the callouses.
After half an hour of his futile labors he dejectedly rose from the pan glancing down at his non-discharge. He pulled the chain, more out of habit, for the toilet was as empty as their vegetable rack.
He clumped back down stairs where his wife, Mable, was busy concocting some hell brew to induce a peristaltic movement, a potion that would dislodge his own and indeed her own internal Stone Henge.
"It's no use love, we've tried everything, we need roughage and shit loads of it.." Whimpered Mable, her face a sickly yellow color. "I know love, if we don't..well that's it - we'll go the way of, of my bloody allotment. Reg were saying that his Gladys had been cooking their meat in  WD40 , don't know what that will do though, probably helps the lubrication." Gizzard gazed out of the window and thought he saw a potato man sitting on the garden bench reading a copy of The Times'
His wife came over and sat down beside him and clasped his hand and they both looked at the potato man. Maybe they could just wait, wait for the rapid discoloration, the wilting of the leaves and the ignoble death, yes that would be best.

I was a pre-teenage Sex Pistol.

      It  was decided, when I was about ten that I would go and live with my Auntie Agnes in Shepherds Bush. I had become too much for my long suffering parents and to spare any further suffering on both our parts I was to be exiled west for a dose of Auntie Agnes' unique brand of nephew husbandry.                                  She was a fearsome woman, but she was as equally loving and affectionate and swung between these polarities like a metronome; one minute she could be admonishing me for not eating all my dinner and next, with  a deft shift of her psycho/emotional gear box she'd pooter into the calmer and infinitely  pleasanter lay by of auntie hood while her demons - for the time being - raced by in souped up arctics.                                 

     In the days when the moustache was (Jason) King, we kids would gather round the rented Decca T.V set and watch Auntie Agnes harangue and intimidate referees and wrestlers alike on World Of Sport. There she'd be at the front (always the front) trading insults and expletives as her "man" was knocked and bashed in the contrived dance of the contrived bout; her piece de resistance however was her appearance in the ring itself wherein  my father would let out a long sigh and utter: "She's gone  Agnes again," at which we kids would whoop and holler at this latest spectacle - willing ante to, as it were, up the ante. However this would be difficult. Short of actually committing murder, acts of violence where were well within her repertoire, she'd think nothing of wielding her patent leather handbag with a robust windmill motion that would have had Pete Townsend questioning his own technique. Eventually she was barred from all venues  in the country and consoled herself with Gin and the on off button. Saturdays took on a rather dull pallor; we loved her.
  And so I  found myself - to use a wrestling metaphor - in the bear hug embrace of Auntie Agnes.
  Home was a two bedroom cube on a typical estate: concrete piled on concrete leading to concrete, with a view of more of the same. A warren of alleys and passages coursed through it's body like mold through  a smelly Stilton.
  We got on well A.A and I (as Agnes will be here on in referred to as) She seemed interested in me and how I felt about things. "Schools going OK  No one's bullying you,? coz if they are I'll come down that school and fucking tan some arses, so I will.."  She actually DID come down to my school on one occasion, apropos of nothing in particular. I spotted A.A's shock of blue black hair rising above the school yard wall, a morbid beehive like burnt nylon, or smoke from a burning tyre. My friends thought she was cool because of her appearances on World of Sport and I gained  kudos from my peers for this, I basked somewhat in the afterglow of her infamy.                                                                           

 It was about this time that I became interested in punk particularly The Sex Pistols, and A.A - not adverse to following the fickle moods of fashion, positively encouraged me in this. A.A however was stuck somewhere in the early 60's and with the beehive, was Divines mother to Divines mother in John Waters Female Trouble only a vastly dieted specimen and with a greater grasp of the wonderful potential of the word: "fuck" and  the much maligned: "fucking," which punctuated her discourse as frequently as she was able.                             
We sat together on the edge of the sofa  with our meal of "crispy pancakes"and watched with much mirth as the Pistols actually swore on T.V, goaded as they were by the toad Grundy, who for his part was quietly shunted off - probably in the manner of a drunk being thrown from a pub - to a retirement home for past there sell by date(never) has beens. We loved it; A.A said that if that, " fucking fucker as much as looked at me, I'd fuck his arse with his own leg..!" Which was quite restrained for A.A.
Sometimes we'd go up the Kings Road, she with her backcombed, backdated hair and me with my Sid t.shirt and junior Doc's hoping to see someone famous - but we never did; although A.A swore to me that she saw Rotten going in- rather incongruously - a cake shop, which is not that impossible I suppose, he's not called "Rotten" for nothing.

"I smell the Gibbon!"

   Many years ago when I was a  young lad, school was an endless hokey kokey of jocularity, of misadventures and a seemingly endless opportunity for mirth  and pre- pubescent ideas of anarchy and rebellion. Hardly a week went by when I wasn't standing outside the headmasters hallowed door awaiting retribution and six brisk flicks of his cane. Ah the cane, an almost mythical object, rarely seen and only brought out in the most dire of circumstances - his Excalibur you might say. Scotty as we used to refer to him, kept his cane discretely stashed away behind a sort of trophy cabinet that housed one or two "cups" that looked like Roman relics with the addition of a few mummified flys; such was my schools sporting achievements.
My main fear in these times was that old Scotty would leave us waiting too long, indeed this would have been a more apt punishment: to stand, waiting, waiting..With no end in sight, for eternity - well for at least fifteen minutes. Soon when a more liberal feeling pervaded the staff room, public humiliation was the weapon of choice. Bloody liberals.
While we waited we'd coach each other in the protocol of the condemned; the do's and don't's, the why's and why not's, the ayes to the left and the no's to the right which basically consisted of not laughing or farting - the latter was an absolute. It was absolutely absolute, it was as inviolable as burning the school down, smoking or cheating on cross country - however the latter two were often combined. " Whatever you do don't laugh or fart.." Ha ha, to be young again, to be without fear, without responsibility, the certainty that we're going to live forever, that my body won't tire or break down, that I won't become an alcoholic or a Big Issue seller,or live under a holly bush and so on and so forth..
We're ushered into his inner sanctum; it's just as I remember : the fly cabinet  is still defamed by the sporting bibelot; there's a smell of stale cigarettes, the window overlooks the sport field where under- enthused kids in games kit run hither and thon, catching things, kicking things or throwing things - or perhaps they're all retarded.
He lines us up before the desk, pauses for long moments, the clock ticks. I can feel that I'm going to lose it, I'm going to burst like a loon, a mad boy and fall on the floor and become the first boy to ever die of laughter in Scotty's office. They'll place a little blue  plaque reverentially on the spot where I die and all the future miscreants who step over Scotty's threshold  will stand solemnly and respectively...and then piss themselves with laughter!
But no, I have it under control - I'll just concentrate on icebergs or deep space. Just look straight ahead and concentrate. But the bastard is taking so long, he hasn't even opened his mouth. I think he's daring us to laugh, to succumb to the pressure, he's enjoying this. The moments pass like centuries.
And then the bastard goes and says: " I smell the gibbon!"

Socialist Berserker.

Decided for no particular reason to sally forth today, to check out this thing called BristolHarbourfest. I found myself in town; I found myself  jostling and barging my way through  Nuremberg size crowds - not as strategically placed as the latter gathering - although in some areas stages of various sizes had been erected whereby earnest people played pale music on acoustic guitars and sang songs about falling in love on a barge in Cambridgeshire. The audience, little islands of tipsy bonhomie, sat crossed legged or lolled or stood or not. I saw one fellow in a curious repose of right angles, his face pushed up hard against a horse chestnut tree, an eclectic  loam of beer cans and wine bottles lay around bearing witness to his piss up.
I wandered off in search of, nothing really. I hate festivals of any stripe. I hate the collective spirit of good will, a sort of Woodstock (very) lite, an idealistic hope pervades that the next band will be The Fucking Levellers or their kin.     I hate the food and the trinkets and the trinket sellers - over priced tat they've imported from some far Eastern hellhole for a pittance - life's cheap and then you die. Never trust a hippie or someone who makes a living form selling lentil concoctions, and green tea - surely the devils tears.
Anyway I'm digressing here. The Socialist Worker! We've all seen them, standing outside PoundStretcher of an afternoon clutching their propaganda rag (circulation 11) Serious middle aged anoracked men with glasses and soft hands. Who, seriously, would announce to a prospective girlfriend (Socialists are exclusively men) or anyone for that matter that they were a Socialist. Personally if I had a choice I'd rather announce I was a Christian or I heard voices  that made me do "things." Which is one and the same really. It's a totally redundant ideology.
One of their number stopped me and asked if I'd sign his petition. The Socialists you see have a bee in their berets about that chap in Norway who happened to run amok with serious weaponry. They think there's some kind of far right conspiracy that's going to engulf us all in riots and race war, in tears and hatred, in Swastikas and re-runs of Till Death Do Us Part.We simply don't have a history of dalliances with far left or right movements, unlike the French or the Spanish or the Germans  I'll admit there are far right groups  in this country but they're totally inconsequential, and well, silly - just like their Socialist opponents at the other end of the spectrum. Believe, in their Socialist demi-heaven I would probably be the first up against the wall and then you and you...Politics suck!
I didn't sign his conspiracy petition - I noticed he only had 4 signatures- I stared at it, I stared a bit more and said with my head held high and in a clear voice: "I can't sign this!" His demeanor changed from informal informative to mildly challenging and intimidatory. "Why not!" he demanded, again I paused trying to muster up an intelligent and witty reposte, his question hung in the air like a dispatched counter revolutionary...
  " I haven't got my reading glasses on.." I didn't have the wherewithal to carry on with this fundamentalist, or even the interest really. Your an extremist I thought and it doesn't matter what I say, if you had a gun and come the glorious revolution - you'd shoot me anyway. I thank you comrade.
He laughed at this, possibly sensing I may sign and just to be sure he proceeded to read out his wonky manifesto, the finer points of the Socialist agenda and other scaremongering tactics. I noticed some wit had signed himself as Lennon ( get it?)
Just then Citizen Smiths phone parped into life and I made my escape and rejoined the prolatarian Utopia.
We don't need left and we don't need right, what we need a is a revolution of the mind.
Hiel Hitler, only joking!

Testing...

Bon! I thought I'd stick up on the ipod device here, a track by the mighty Sewer Zombies as you can see- I assume you can see, in which case only 50% of this blog will be applicable and you'll be relying on audial stimulus. Sadly you will be left in the-as it were- sewer. I thank you.
Had a bit of a trial (by ordeal) actually figuring out how to post something on here and, to be frank ( don't you reckon when someone says: "to tell you the truth.." it implies that normally they tell lies and are not to be trusted)
I nearly jettisoned the whole idea and almost went off and did something useful..But I knew that way meant death and worse: boredom, lassitude, inertia and chess- punctuated by outbreaks of inept guitar truffling and fiddling. Surely worse than any Dantean imagining or the god of the Jews could dream up. I knew a little voice far off but ever present, rather like a satellite signal, would nag and harass me and that this little kernel would become a big acorn tree populated by raggedy birds with self hate in their/my  black eyes.
These feelings, for a person such as I are not good and should be avoided and have a momentum all of their own- leading, ultimately to alcohol and drug misuse and public displays of trampism. A self fulfilling prophecy.
So I carried on and with a little help from my friends (Lennon, MacCartney and Sally) I chopstick the keys with all the dexterity of  tailors mannaquin on Mogodon ( wouldn't that be a great name for a band, in the spirit of Sleep, Sun))), Earth et al) I love you all. Not bad for a misanthrope. Capture The Light, indeed.
Next...?