October 13th

We lost mum today
an unmarked ambulance took her away
not on a stretcher like little Jimmy Sanchez
or the Bolivian
she walked
unaided
but no goodbyes for dad

And he cried, when she never turned around
and left my sister to take the flak
Mum's in a home now
though God knows where she thinks she is

The nurse is big & black
and mum didn't need to be asked twice
when served up a hot lunch of meat-pie
no husband at table
just flowers
instead
or so my sister said

More Followers Please?

The idea, is to consolidate all of my social-networking time, into one daily narrative.
I rarely get comments on my blog, and that's a shame because more thought goes into what is actually written here.
The witty & sometimes informative Twitter is too restrictive.
Facebook now resembles a more colourful, yet less interesting, Ad-Trader.
And Paddy's mum's laptop can't cope with the multi-manic applications on MySpace.

Will you follow me here?
I'll follow you........

A Poem For National Poetry Day

No-one has ever written a poem about me.
No-one that is, until Luke Wright penned this for R4's Saturday Live programme.
It's possibly the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.

"My mate Yanny dropped his phone in the bath
He knifed his Broadband line, kicked in his set
Grew vegetables along his garden-path
Wrote letters to everyone he’d ever met:
His old school friends, forgotten dinner guests
first boss, girlfriend, the man who brought the coal
he wrote in biro from an old fusty desk
didn’t use similes, wrote his words out in full
and soon the replies began coming back
Printed envelopes outnumbered by scrawled-on ones
with pink stickers, as his friends packed
them out with stuff they never said when they called
There was something about making something
that appealed to blokes who had previously
just penned one-line texts about birds & bling,
and each one back felt like something for free
Better nonsense composed at window sills
than a clockwork life and a mat full of bills."

Hallowe'en

I took a 3-day sabbatical from Facebook.
A de-cyberspace-cation, if you will.
I found it troublesome.
Unnerving.
On some days (mainly yesterday) I found myself searching for reasons to pop on to FB.
I had to rationalise with myself that, by removing all 'Notifications' from my email account, denial of access to my social-networking sites was not, in fact, a breach of my basic human rights.
I cried pitifully when I realised that I couldn't make witty & incisive comments after Match of the Day II, to 400 or so 'Friends', who were quite probably at home, online definitely, and ultimately bereft, due to my lack of participation in the safe & friendly neighbourhood local banter a.k.a. Facebook Chat.

I got through it though.
I got through all of the 3 days.

Every single one.

I only wavered once.
Yesterday I removed my Profile Pic from my FB page, and then deleted my last Status Update.
A last defiant act of non-committal.
Other than that, I was incommunicado.

And I was free!

I found that I had not necessarily gained more time per se; but had done a lot more with the time available.
I started jobs that needed doing & began projects that required starting.
I did a long overdue woollens-wash.
I wrote a poem.
I phoned my father.
I emptied the filter on the washing-machine.
I washed the filter on the Dyson.
I watched two recorded episodes of Coast.
And I stopped procrastinating.

My productive chunks of creativity were wholesome & satisying.
There weren't any definable gaps in my daily schedule without Facebook! No!
There were holes, but my efforts had obscured their vacancies from my peripheral view.
Proper gone.
I had discovered the value of time, not the quantifiable absence of it.

If you think about it, time is all we have.
Time is now.

My People; My Followers.
It's time we were more precious about time.
A time for understanding.
Understanding time....


PLEASE REMEMBER TO PUT YOUR CLOCKS BACK BY 1HOUR ON OCTOBER 31st.

The more we Google, the less we know ("Notes For An Artist In Auld Reekie")

Watching absolutely no-one watching the Commonwealth Games today, I got to thinking about Lord Horatio Nelson's mum & dad. I Googled 'Catherine Suckling' and, although the various web-pages were in agreement about the date she married Mr.Nelson Snr., four of the first ten listed were wrong about the venue. As a resident of Beccles, I know that she was married here, but a Wiki-entry has the wedding in Bath. As does several other copy & paste knowledge-fonts, including a '.edu' establishment.
I then decided that the internet as a source of information, was actually a bit shit.
As there is no body to scrutinise, amend or reject my findings, I would like to share with you my post-Edinburgh "Notes For An Artist In Auld Reekie".

Scottish water will require use of more hair-product.
The people we see on the telly aren't always like they are on telly.
Mobile phone reception is negligible.
Eating fish & chips on the bus is not a crime.
Meadowbank Stadium appears surplus to requirement.
Boys who wear trainers have no sense of smell.
An Edinburgh head-cold can last a while.
Full-houses do not guarantee laughs.
Greggs are not just a southern phenomena.
Despite staying lighter later, the streets of Edinburgh get very dark early.
Scotland now understands the concept of 'chav'.
A BK cheeseburger-meal is rather unsatisfying.
Scottish women are more attractive than their men.
Despite being regular, efficient & cheap, it is advisable to avoid Edinburgh buses between 7pm & 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays.
Man cannot live on chips & sauce alone.
August is a great time to spot egotistical wankers.
Irn Bru & square sausage are slightly overrated.

The smell of Fall.

So I'm just back from Edinburgh.
I say 'just'; it's been over two weeks, but it's taken all of that time to re-adjust to Beccles Town.
For a start, the streets of my rural abode aren't littered with A5 paper-flyers, themselves littered with quotes & reasons as to why I should 'not miss' a particular show.
If Beccles needed to advertise in this way, it would probably put up one hoarding saying "It's a bit shit, but pop-in if you're free?"
This will be the title of my next show.

The other thing that sets Suffolk apart from Scotland's capital city, is the smell.
At this time of year we are constantly awakening to a fug that can only be described as 'shitty'.
As a child, my parents would chastise me for wrinkling my nose, and follow this up with "It's only a bit of muck!"
For the past few years however, 'a bit of muck' has begun to smell like human faeces.
I'm reliably told that it is chicken-shit, lovingly matured by the local poultry 'manufacturers' a la Mr.Matthews, but I'm also reliably told (by another source) that the local water companies sell-on our own human waste, which is then degraded to a rich-smelling manure, for use in agro-chemical spreading.
It's not pleasant.
My wife says it smells like blood & bone, or kitten-kibble, and this makes me think it isn't in anyway similar to the grassy horse-poo we use on the allotment!

Anyway; today the air is free of smells.
It's blustery, sunny & cool, and there's a distinct sense that a new seasonal-chapter is about to open.
I love autumn.
I love it so much, I don't mind referring to it as 'Fall'.
For clean-freaks like me, September is a time to start emptying those slug-pubs, turning the compost-heap, harvesting the last corn-cobs, tomatoes & elderberries, chopping up firewood and tidying up the land, as we head into the ever-darkening months of winter.
I love days like these.

And as I leap from my bed and put on my well-worn gardening clothes, I catch my foot in my braces, stumble towards a sleeping kitten, narrowly miss squashing her, by concocting a sort-of Highland Fling-meets-Diversity dance-step, trip over three pairs of jodhpurs, two pairs of gaiters, a riding helmet and crop, and land with an almighty thump, somewhere between salvation & hospitalisation.

I'm ok.
A bit bruised & broken.
Just totally fucked for another day.

Autumnal smell or no smell, the garden & allotment can wait for a bit.
There's only so much you can do with elderberries anyway.......

We've grouted the bathroom; now for the renaissance.....

I'm off to Edinburgh tomorrow.
5 years ago, after some quality broadsheet write-ups & a BBC Edinburgh Review TV appearance, I said that I'd never go again.
Times change.
Needs must.

There's nothing of importance in this blog.
I'm still not quite sure of the efficacy of all the communication-tools available to me.
I was about to change my Facebook status to "I'm off to Edinburgh tomorrow", when I thought to myself, I can Tweet that.
I fired-up the behemoth, and as I waited for the hourglass to leave the screen, and the dingly-dong Window's signature tune to fade into kettle & toaster buzz, I thought; Wouldn't this be easier by cell-phone?
(I still call them cell-phones. They're not properly connected.
To anything.)
And then Snooze pointed out that there were applications that would automatically do this for me.
And I felt quite unimportant.
So I blogged instead.
It's a lot more personal this way.
I only have 14 'Followers'.
You.
So this way, I feel like I'm addressing a crowd.
A small crowd.
There's nothing of importance in this blog.
But the BBC Edinburgh Review programme informed us this week, that the average audience at Fringe shows, was 5 people.