an eighty eighth poem...'carry on carrington #7'

‘We just need some luck’,

Opined David,

‘Cluck, cluck, lady luck’,

Phil grinned.

David scowled, ‘it’s no

Time for jokes, Phil’, he said.

‘Managing this team is

Like managing a

Roulette table’.

‘And the Theatre of

Dreams is the Casino’,

Phil mused.

David knocked back

Another whiskey chaser.

‘… and with a car park

Full of Ferraris’,

Phil continued wistfully,

Lost in his reverie.

Then David stood up,

A little unsteady, brushed

The liquor from his lips –

‘Phil, we should go to

Monte Carlo’, he announced.

‘Monte who?’ said Phil.

‘Where the Nuts come from’,

Said David.

an eighty seventh poem...'carry on carrington #6'

Diego and David

Made for an old couple,

Sat together in the white

Dubai heat.

The players, as ever,

Were doing basic

Training – Smalling

Was being helped

To his feet for

Something like

The seventeenth time.

‘It’s a transitional

Season’, said David.

But Diego didn’t reply,

Kept chomping on

His Cuban cigar.

‘Problem is’,

David continued resolutely,

‘Some of the attacking

Players have lost

Their speed over

Ten yards’.

The tempo of play,

Admittedly, would barely

Have registered on a

life-support machine.

‘Have they tried

Cocaine?’, Diego

Shot back.

David chuckled

At the bad joke, but

Made a mental note

To get some to

Liven up his Tactical

Planning Meetings with

Messrs Round and Neville.

an eighty sixth poem...'carry on carrington #5'

As David entered the dressing-room,

Cleverley’s new shell-suit

Reflected every

Single prism of sun-light.

David shielded his eyes.

And Phil, more out of

Habit than anything,

Did the same too.

‘Jesus’, said David,

‘It’s Joseph’s Technicolour

Scapegoat’.

Cleverley – who had been

Applying yet more

Brylcreem to his thousand

pound crew-cut, turned

And said: ‘Yes, it is I!’

an eighty fifth poem...'carry on carrington #4'

‘Who’s the chap

In the wig?’, asked

David, leaning in

Close, and whispering

In Phil’s ear.

‘I think … he’s

The light entertainment

For today’, replied

Phil, unsure.

‘Oh’, said David.

‘Who on earth

Sanctioned light entertainment?’

The chap in the wig,

Who had been performing,

Up until that point,

All kinds of apparently

Awkward acrobatics,

Was then hit

On the back of the

Head by an Unidentified

Spherical Object, and fell

(again) to the ground.

David spun around,

Furious in his

Small, impish manner;

Robin was standing

Perhaps twenty yards

Away, pretending to

Lace his boots.

‘You there’, David

ordered, ‘go and find

Out what it was

That interrupted

Our light entertainment!’

Oh balls! Thought Robin,

This is ridiculous.

an eighty fourth poem...'carry on carrington #3'

In dream-reality,

David finally got

His Man.

Before him, across

The Manager’s Desk

At Carrington,

Sat none other than Bayern

Munich’s star-midfielder

Tony Kroos.

David knew his

Signing would prove

Momentous in the

History of Manchester United;

He searched briefly

For the right words,

Something fitting -

‘Ich bin ein Berliner’, he

Announced after a

Short pause.

Kroos, shifted in his

Seat. ‘I agree’

He replied, in German,

Although he didn’t add

‘You are indeed

A jelly-donut’.

an eighty third poem...'carry on carrington #2'

‘Where’s Sir Alex?’

Asked David.

‘Up there with Malcolm

And Wayne’,

Said Robin – although

He was only teasing.

David raised his

Bug eyes to

The fourth floor office,

And as he did so

He swore he

Could see smoke

Billowing from an

Open window.

‘Fire’, yelled David.

Steve looked round,

Incredulous.

Phil stopped picking his nose.

Robin smirked:

‘They’ve chosen a

new Pope’, he said.

‘Who says?’, asked

David-all-in-a-

Panic.  Robin

Pursed his expensive

Lips, replied with a

Dashing ironical smile

‘… well … that is simply

What they tell me!’

an eighty second poem...'carry on carrington'

David glanced furtively out the window. 

The rain was slanting down. 

The deep creases on his furrowed

Brow showed as he frowned.

He took a tentative sip of his tea:

Had Phil remembered two sugars?

Or had Robin substituted a packet of

Cornish Sea Salt once more?

If so, it would mean another needless

Round of British Military Fitness,

And then – perhaps, hopefully – war!

an eighty first poem...'gerrity'

Gerrity went down the hill.  That was where he went.  Down the hill, down the muddy track, over the loose stones, pot-holes, broken branches, the slippery hill.  And I waited at the top.  And after a short while I couldn’t see him anymore, could only hear him hollerin’.  And I waited at the top, with his pack full of shot, and the rabbit in a trap.  The pack smelled of damp.  Then I couldn’t hear him hollerin’ anymore.  Gerrity went down the hill, and he didn’t come back.  I waited at the top.  The hill was too slippery because of all the rain, and all the water on the land – Gerrity told me – and the fallen leaves. Gerrity quit hollerin’.  I wondered why, but still he didn’t come back. So I opened his pack with the rabbit in the trap. There was a cloth, and some bread wrapped in there.  I couldn’t see him anymore, I thought maybe I could have it.  The rabbit in the trap was for dinner, Gerrity said.  But he never came back. ‘What you cryin’ for?’, Ma said later.  And later I told how Gerrity went down the hill, and about all the mud and stones. ‘Where is he?’ Ma said.  And I told how I waited at the top. ‘How long?’ Ma said.  Until I finished the bread, I said. ‘You wait here, and I’ll get help’, Ma said.        

an eightieth poem...'junk mail innuendo'

In my Microsoft

Office Inbox

This morning,

I had spam

From ‘Balls Direct’,

‘Printed Pencils’,

And I swear

There was something

About pencil sharpeners

Too.

a sixtieth cartoon...'scorsese'

And last but by no means least, Scorsese.  Another cartoon influenced by Matt Groening, I suppose.  

a fifty ninth cartoon...'de niro'

And to go alongside the cartoon of Di Carpio, De Niro - it's unlikely many people would have seen the former as heir to De Niro little over a decade ago.  That said, watching them both at full throttle is a undeniably a fairly invigorating film experience, even if Di Caprio's performances involve a bit of 'ham'.

a fifty eighth cartoon...'di caprio'

This last month has seen the release of both Martin Scorsese's Wolf on Wall Street, starring Leonardo Di Caprio, a verbose, fast-paced, sometimes laugh-out-loud romp, and The Lego Movie.  This is Di Caprio were he to have been cast in the latter.

a ninetieth story...'the long way around'

He said to come, and so I did – it was a simple decision.  My heart was already set, my mind too.  If he asked, I would go.  And he asked, so I went.  I felt about as calm as I had in a long while, things weren’t necessarily any better than they had ever been, and on some level I still distrusted his motives, or at least didn’t understand them; still, just to spend a weekend with him would be enough to live off for a while, and the anticipation helped me relax in the two or three days in between his invitation and my visiting.

So, I came out of the station and there he was, across the central reservation, wrapped up in a big blue scarf against the brisk winter south-westerly.  I had an urge to run across the lanes of Saturday morning traffic then and there.  But mother always told me, and I’ve since learned, in a metaphorical sense if you play in the road, you get run down.  It isn’t like in the movies where vehicles grind to halt, and ex-lovers race across car bonnets to meet each other in a freeze-frame embrace.  In real life you’d both end up as raspberry jam, another RTA statistic.

After a short pause, I brushed the hair from my eyes, and resolved to go the long way around. 

a fifty seventh cartoon...'just be kind'

...it's fair to assert that, in essence, the secret to a good life is kindness - by (a) definition it involves an acknowledgement of and a generosity towards others; giving and not necessarily expecting the same in return, and being fine with it. But heck! Kindness can be hard!

a fifty sixth cartoon...'jackson'

Jackson C. Frank is, in a sense, yet another doomed composite rock (cum-folk) star.  He burned out, faded away - died destitute and largely forgotten, but not quite forgotten.  He recorded one album, produced by Paul Simon, and it's a cracker; however, for some reason the album cover (which I have reproduced in haphazard fashion here) is the most interesting part, at least insofar as Jackson's looks and proud stance remind me very much of Rodin's statue of the French playwright Balzac.

a fifty fifth cartoon...'paradise(?)'

One of most tragicomic lines in literature is (of course) by the late, great Kurt Vonnegut - Vonnegut imagines what Hitler's last words would have been as, trapped in his bunker in Berlin, the Russians invade the city; Hitler eventually settles on 'I never asked to be born in the first place', then blows his brains out.  Someone asked me recently what I thought paradise might be like, I said somewhere warm, safe, where you are loved.

a seventy ninth poem...'bodies'

I once told a

Girl how much

I admired her

Molecular structure;

She looked

Quizzical,

Until at last -

After we had

Agreed to

Get physical -

On some level

She understood.

a fifty fourth cartoon...'the long player'

Today the music industry announced that for the first time half of it's profits are now generated by downloads and streaming.  While it's good to see the industry adapting to new ways of listening to music, from an aesthetic point of view this is a worry for three reasons: firstly, even though sales of vinyl in particular have seen a boost in the last few years, physical sales continue to decline - if streaming and downloads continue to grow, surely vinyl will suffer in the end - and this means the slow death of visual art in popular music; secondly, with an increasing number of micro-transactions from downloads, and streaming of bits and pieces, the concept of the long player - a collection of songs that made an album from beginning to end - is seen as less important, to the detriment of popular music as an art form; and thirdly with all these nasty (!) little portable devices people download and/or stream music from these days, even the tonal quality of popular music is being undermined, a good example being the frankly horrible 'iTunes mix' for David Bowie's recent album, The Next Day. 

a fifty third cartoon...'city at night'

The city after dark, viewed from the air - a kaleidoscope of pin-hole lights against the blue, black night.

a fifty second cartoon...'dawn mountain road'

Whereas twilight can be the loneliest time of day, dawn can be one of the most joyous as the sun creeps above the horizon, and the land comes sleepily and gently back to life.  Travelling on the roads in the small, early hours around first light is often a very serene and tranquil experience.

a fifty first cartoon...'m.e.s'

M.E.S are the initials of one Mark Edward Smith.  He shares a birthday with me - March 5.  In theory this makes him a Pisces (hence the aqua blue back-drop): the infamously irascible group-leader of the Fall may indeed be highly sensitive, or he may not (Smith is famous for claiming he doesn't care about his reputation, his fans, his critics); one thing is for certain, he isn't afraid of change - having hired and fired a record number of band-mates over the years.  It has been said if you walk out into any busy high-street, you are likely to run into someone who was once in The Fall.

a fiftieth cartoon...'no more tea, vicar'

It seems, at the moment, a large number of people are somewhat suspicious and confused about faith - in fact anything described in spiritual and or religious overtones - 'what's the point in it?', 'where can I find it?', 'does it wear a hat?'...and so on.  I wonder how much of this is, however, simply more about a distrust of institutions with a political agenda-cum-philosophy? Either way, the Church has been humiliated in the last few years - it's an easy target for a lazy hatchet job - which is a shame in the sense that the important debate of why we are here on planet earth, rather, what we should do while we're here has suffered as a consequence.

a forty ninth cartoon...'encounter'

French philosopher Jean Vanier says an encounter is not an exercise in power, but instead demands humility - and it's hard not to agree; humility, I suppose, also involves allowing oneself to become vulnerable in a sense, and with that vulnerability comes openness and easy company.

a forty eighth cartoon...'bedroom view'

This is the approximate view from my parent's bedroom back at the family home.  It's one of my favourite views, made by the juxtaposition of council houses at the end of the garden, and, in the distance, the rolling hills of the South Downs.  I often used to stop and gaze at the downs; hills like this were here long before we were, and there is a kind of grace and dignity in that - permanence, a quality perhaps less readily understood in our lives today, where we can, rather like small children, pick up and put things down without thinking.

a forty seventh cartoon...'sunday afternoon'

I chose to call this cartoon 'Sunday afternoon', because for me, The Little Chef, once ubiquitous at every motor-way service station, traveler's rest, is emblematic of the grey and dreary state of mind one often finds oneself in on a Sunday - the weekend seems over, the prospect of five more (!) days of work looms large, and the alcohol on your brain makes everything seem slow, and difficult - not to mention colourless.  Also Little Chef's,  for me - as a child of the eighties - are synonymous with long drives home from seeing relatives in various parts of the country, and reminded me, then, of school in the morning.  As an aside, one must check out photographer Paul Graham - brilliant at capturing the mundane.

a forty sixth cartoon...'mexico'

This cartoon is a Mexican landscape in the middle of the day - hence the reason the tree isn't casting a shadow.  The vivid colours are intended to give the impression of the intense heat you can encounter in this part of the world, where bare-naked feet burn on blistering ground.  It's part inspired by surrealist painter Joan Miro, who was recently the subject of a career retrospective at the TATE, as well as the various (and seemingly endless) slew of Sunday Matinee Westerns that used to be a staple in our family.

a forty fifth cartoon...'money'

Living in London you hear a lot of money talk - but it's too easy to dismiss it as vulgar or vainglorious: not everyone is born into wealth, and yet (nearly?) everyone who slides out of the womb kicking and screaming (an entirely natural reaction to arriving on planet earth) holds aspirations to do, or be seen as better - money is both a reward for achievement and a symbol.  However, one must be careful that money does not become one's main life pursuit (spending money on someone, for example, does not have the same value as spending good time with them) - even if money can provide the foundations for attaining the various incorporeal delights that (amazingly enough) do exist and can be found.

a seventy eighth poem...'kate's birthday poem - if kate says'

If Kate says

‘Natch’

She means

‘Naturally’,

Which is

Fine up to

A point;

The point

Being where

She exclaims:

‘Totes Amaze!’

This the moment

I think to

Myself

- As a Man of

Letters -

‘Oh my days!’

a seventy seventh poem...'fan letter'

It is unusual to

Receive a missive

From a dead man,

But it can

Happen.

When you

Drop the stylus

Into the groove,

Hear the gramophone speakers

Hiss and crackle,

Moved

By the opening

Trills of

A barrel-house piano,

And the keening voice

Two hundred miles

From turning back,

Two hundred from

Never coming home;

Lone-

some rattle of

A loose snare,

The crunch of a

Vintage Fender,

On your fan letter

A scribbled note

That reads:

‘Return to sender’.

a forty fourth cartoon...'friendly bombs'

I suppose, depending on how prudish (and well versed in poetry) one is, this cartoon will either be considered as scatological humour, or flagrant vulgarity.  In it's defence, this is a response to a sound - a sound, that to me, sounds like a bowel movement; a sound from which I have been asked to react to through the medium of art.  Art can be repulsive, provocative, and amusing, all at the same time - Tracey Emin's 'unmade bed', for instance.

a forty third cartoon...'tangled up in blue'

'We drove that car as far as we could, abandoned it out West; split up on a dark, sad night, both agreeing it was best'.  Bob Dylan wrote so many love songs in the form of travelogues, Tangled Up In Blue from Blood on the Tracks ('75), possibly the pick of a very good bunch.

a forty second cartoon...'ferries'

The golden age of ferry travel seems to have gone forever - what with the Channel Tunnel, budget airlines, not to mention the enormous cost involved in keeping a sea-going vessel of ferry-sized proportions going.  It's a shame in a sense; travelling by sea (although easily romanticised) is a slow way of unwinding, and a world removed from the various superhighways we spend much of our lives speeding around and around (sometimes in a near perpetual circle).

a seventy sixth poem...'stomach for the weekend'

The weekend:

Where did it

Go? To the

Bottom of

A whiskey jar?

Same way

As music

Carried off

On the wind

From a below

Street-level

City bar?

Same way

As ash falling

From a lighted

Cigarette?

Same way

As your money

On a bad game

Of roulette?

Same way

As words swallowed

Before they

Tripped from

Your Tongue?

Same way

As the breath

Your stomach

Snatched from

Your lungs,

When she

Said she was

Leaving early

For some place
Somewhere else.

a forty first cartoon...'office still-life'

Still-life paintings have never really been my cuppa.  There are one or two exceptions, namely Van Gogh (yes, The Sunflowers!) and Matisse (various); however, how many fruit bowls and/or vases of flowers can one take in and enjoy?!  Still-life painting has it's origins in Graeco-Roman art, and became a professional specialisation in the 16th century, it's aim to depict the inanimate and the common-place, at the same time as giving the artist freedom in composition (by contrast with the then disciplines of portraiture and landscape painting). Offices are, in a sense, still-lifes, or so they can appear...the only movements being fingers on keyboards, or the occasional tongue wagging when speaking down the telephone; these days you don't even have to move between desks, let alone floors.  This cartoon has plenty of the inanimate and the common-place; the artistic freedom exercised being the rather frivolous use of primary colours.

a seventy fifth poem...'the long now'

Words break in

Our mouths like

Old sorrows,

You’re speaking but

I’m listening only

To my heart,

In the long now,

Still beating

For you.

a fortieth cartoon...'great bear'

This cartoon hasn't reproduced particularly well. Ho hum!  Somewhere in the constellations above the fir trees, you might be able to make out 'the great bear'.  It's a special thing to be in the woods late on a winter night.  However trivial or meaningless our problems seem to be, they don't, of course, always go away (and so should be given due consideration); and yet looking up at the star-spangled night sky can at least lift us from our earthbound trail for a moment, every now and again.

a thirty ninth cartoon...'extra! extra!'

T-shirts are to me like sandwich boards: they can be used to announce to the World!  I'm always surprised, and somewhat fascinated, by the fact on one level people understand that the way they dress is a form of self-expression, and yet, when it comes to giving their clothes a voice (T-shirts in particular) people tend to go for generic slogans and/or brands.  The latest one I have 'designed' says: 'Live more / Exist less' - a good philosophy intended to expand one's horizons in life a little further: although, admittedly, I owe my old friend Hugo for that little nugget.

a thirty eighth cartoon...'gas'

Cars are a barometer for the state of our lives - or rather, our material wealth as individuals, and as a society; but they are also a strong metaphor for the condition of our hearts, our minds, our souls.  Life is a journey, and we all start out wanting (in part at least) to explore beyond the horizon...sadly, not that many of us get close, or close enough (at least by something approaching our own reckoning), and end up running out of fuel on the way, because the road is full of metaphysical pot-holes, end up in the proverbial knacker's yard.  

a seventy fourth poem...'day off'

Spent the morning eating chocolate – rolling each square around and around with my tongue, until the chocolate melted, and coated the roof of my mouth.  Then I’d wash it away with a swig from a flask of strong, dark coffee, put my feet up, and gaze out into the small garden.  The rain had left standing water in places, and droplets of rain still clung to the bare branches of the apple trees, and when a bird alighted, the branches shook imperceptibly and the droplets of rain shuddered from them, back into the sinking ground.  The sky was overcast, the cloud cover giving a grey-purple light to the garden which made the lawn seemed greener than ever - almost fluorescent, but for the brown, leafy puddles.  The house was gloomy, but I was enjoying the natural light, and the dull shades of colour it gave to the living room.  And because of the rain, humdrum sounds from outside were dampened, and all I could really hear was the low splutter of the gas boiler, and the slow ticking of the nautical clock, that once belonged to my father, on the mantelpiece.  I was wearing my thick cotton socks, and an old Guernsey, things were warm and peaceable. And I had a second-hand paperback with me in case I felt the need to exert myself, but I did not, was content instead to open a page at random and inhale the dry, sweet smell of old paper, idly dreaming up a lazy narrative of my own.

a seventy third poem...'sing'

My love

Made a song

Out of thin

Air and the

Notes quivered

On the air

Currents and

Her chest

Rose and fell

Heaved like

A squeeze-box

And I looked

At my hands

In the moonlight

And they were

Trembling

Like the notes

And all I

Could hear

Was old brass

A marching band

And I realised

I just wasn’t

Born for

These times

And later

The wind got up

And the curtains

Became full

As sails

Were sucked

Into the night

And my love

Lay silent

Somewhere in

Her dreams

And I loved her

More than

Ever then, even

Though I had

Not made

Her sing.

a seventy second poem...'how we laughed'

I used to

Work in an

Administrative

Capacity at a

Local GP surgery.

One day we

Registered a patient

By the name of

Edward Andrew

Thomas Balls.

E.A.T.Balls.

How we laughed!

a thirty seventh cartoon...'canal'

This is a cartoon of The Regent's Canal in London.  You can stroll the tow-path in a day from east-west, meandering through the city, past the Camden locks, stopping at a watering-hole every now and again for refreshment.  Walking in the city is a great thing, and fills in one's head map of what could otherwise be a bewildering urban sprawl.  Good thoughts come when walking too.

a seventy first poem...'a very small piece of history'

So - quickly -  here’s what

Happened...About five minutes

Ago I was chatting in the

Laboratory with my assistant,

Jimbo. We were experimenting

With shrinking objects,

Both animate, and inanimate.

Well, Jimbo needed a

Whizz – he had drank half

A bottle of Ice-cream

Soda. And when he was out

Of the room, I began

Idly playing with the dials

On the ray-gun – very foolish!

Suddenly, I guess, there

Must have been a power

Surge, and in a blinding

Flash of magnesium-white

Light, I was ‘diminished’,

To about the size of

 A European ant. Now,

Jimbo had left

His near empty Styrofoam

Cup, on it’s side, atop the laboratory

Table. And I went to sit on the

Lip. To wait for Jimbo to

Return. And reverse the

Situation. However, when he came

Back into the room, instead he’s

Gone and picked up his cup, not

Noticing little yours truly, and

Sent me sliding down the inside

Of the thing, in a sticky

Sluice; has put the plastic

Lid on and has begun slurping.

His straw is a goddamn vacuum!

Any time soon, I…

…could…be…

a…very…small…piece…

of…history.

a thirty sixth cartoon...'it's alive!'

This cartoon requires sound.  And since I can't seem to embed an audio file with this post, I'll just have to let the imagination generate noise.  The inspiration comes from the album cover of The Smoking Popes excellent debut album, Born To Quit.

a thirty fifth cartoon...'love hz'

When one falls in love, one is, in a sense, completely broken, and then put back together; feelings about oneself and one's life re-arranged.  This can result in something happening that is rather beautiful, a Grayson Perry moment if you will - Perry has, in the past, made new art out of deconstruction.  It can also result in something rather terrible if said love dies, and/or goes unrequited; a grotesque reconstruction that simply doesn't fit together as it used to - you might call this doing a Wyndham-Lewis.

a thirty fourth cartoon...'farewell transmission'

The desert is where, beyond the horizon, there lies nothing.  A place where people go to die, or rediscover themselves: I suppose it's either a lonely and unforgiving place, or a great, silent space one can find peace of mind and solace in.  The title is from (yet another) song by Jason Molina - his music evokes both claustrophobia and pain, as well as hope and promise.  The best evocation of a desertscape in literature I have come across is in J.G.Ballard's The Drought, in which some of the characters fail to come to terms with their new environs, while others, who were outcasts in the old world, discover something approaching true freedom in the new.

a thirty third cartoon...'the door'

This is a door, a door with an exit sign, the word 'exit' illuminated against a green background for visibility in conditions of low light.  It's a straightforward cartoon, and one I would like to show to David Moyes, the Manchester United manager, and his whole coaching staff.  United's loss to the unalmighty Stoke City at the weekend was their eighth defeat in the Premier League, their fifth in seven matches in 2014.  I laughed, but laughed knowing that laughing and crying are physiologically the same thing in a desperately gloomy situation.