Starstruck

The smooth cold surface offered a vague form of comfort, slightly soothing the pain in his face and arms. He made an attempt to lift his head, grimacing as he did, before deciding to place his cheek back on the cool tiled floor. Blinking his eyes open, the blurry surroundings slowly come into to focus. There are dark red markings on the painfully bright white tiles, instinctive curiosity makes him drag his fingers over the markings, jerking as a bolt of pain shoots down his left arm. 

The markings are blood, he guesses his blood due to the taste metallic in his mouth. He reluctantly swallows. He runs his tongue around the inside of his mouth searching to see if any teeth are missing. Some of the blood has seeped into the grout between the tiles. Slowly rubbing his fingers across the the tiles the red marks remain, dried onto the floor. How long has he been here? Does blood take long to dry? He moves a hand to his head, briefly wincing as he touches a tender area, rough and crispy with dried blood.

The smell of mildew is in his nostrils. At the other side of the room there is a toilet bowl, he wants to throw up. In his current condition it feels a mile away rather than eight feet. Looking up the edge of the sink peers over the top of the worktop. He grabs for the edge of the sink and he tries to pull himself up into a sitting position. A cry of agony rings out as he twists his body round. 

Memories were thrown up, the time he was punished for daring to stand up to his high school nemesis, who had regularly relieved him of his dinner money. He had spiked the bully's drink, stripped him naked and let him wake up under a table in the middle of a crowded dinner hall. In revenge the bully's older brother had gotten involved, the sound of his arm cracking, crushed in a door, still sounded fresh in his memory. 

Nothing was ever proven about the spiking. The brother was excluded from school, due to being caught in the act by a teacher. The bully however left him alone after that, deciding that he wasn't worth the trouble. Last he'd heard about either of them was a rumour that the brother was inside for G.B.H.

The pain was worse than the broken arm; a different memory came to the fore. A few years ago, his failure to embrace monogamy had caused a problem. The result was repeated attempts to kick off his testicles by his wife Mary. As the memory fades the pain he can now feels easily eclipses the pain from that particular scene, sadly though, it doesn't fade.

He feels worse sitting up, momentarily pondering lying down again. He glances over at the stained tiles and then down at his clothes, covered in blood. He wonders where things went wrong? Holding tightly to the edge of the sink, agony throbbing through his muscles, riding a wave of exhaustion that almost brings him back to the tiles. He fights against it with every ounce of strength he doesn't have. Letting out a howl, he throws himself back up on to his feet, nearly losing his balance, gripping tightly onto the sink to stop him crumpling into a heap. Lifting his head to the mirror to see the extent of them damage. Upon seeing his reflection he almost falls back in surprise, not quite sure if it is the pain or the sight of bloody mess that greets him.

He'd never intended for any of this to happen, he should have stuck to punching Big Brother contestants and TV talent show rejects, at least if he had, he would not be here. Perhaps he'd have been caught and sitting feeling sorry for himself in a police cell, which would be infinitely preferable to this.

2017: What The Fuck Is Going On?

On 1st January 1987 the artists known as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu AKA The JAMs AKA The KLF were formed. Whatever you think of they they were innovative, they became the biggest selling act and they had fun doing what they did, then they deleted their back catalogue.

1987: What The Fuck Is Going On? An album that was experiment in sampling, rap and dance music would be unleashed upon the world. 30 years later I'm sitting in here in my kitchen writing a blog not about the KLF, but new year resolutions.

I have no resolutions, Most things happen waves, there will be waves of wanting to get more exercise, being creative, wanting to do something with music, wanting to write something, and the best thing to do is ride the wave as it comes along, there may be incomplete projects scattered around, but they can be picked up again on the next wave.

Looking at the JAMs/KLF, they worked on numerous different ideas, some worked and grew, some floundered. Following that as an example for constructive learning, here am I, experimenting and planning on throwing some things out into the work, some old, some new, some reworked, some with added fertiliser, some planned for a very long time, others off the cuff. Managing to produce a final result and feeling a decent job has been done on them will be success for me. I am not too bothered about what happens with the end result. With that in mind I decided to try remixing a track I had never heard, and didn't listen to until I had completed the mix.



Merry New Year.

Gramophone Douchebag

It's sometime between 1991 and 1995 I'm in HMV on Princes Street in Edinburgh, I've walked into a very spacious shop with lilac carpet and white walls, it looks humongous, it feels like it goes on forever. I'm wandering about checking about the import CD singles (ooh look '˜Pictures of You' Extended single remix and '˜Handbuilt By Perverts') and T-shirts that are available ('˜Sheriff Fatman', a massive Ned's Atomic Dustbin logo in orange and fluorescent yellow.) I'm not buying vinyl here, no, if I want that, I'm off searching Vinyl Villains, hunting down 7" and 12" singles by The Cure, Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, The Wonder Stuff, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Pop Will Eat Itself and Kingmaker. By comparison Vinyl Villains is small, dark and cramped, every inch of space used, notable 7" records and picture discs mounted on the walls, and more prestigious 12" singles and albums hanging from the ceiling.

I loved going round both shops, searching out interesting items, these days Discogs is where I'll find something if I really want it these days, but nothing beats wandering around a record shop to see what treasures I can unearth. It's a shame that HMV stopped being such a place, in the mid 90s, they did some structural work on the building and it was closed for the best part of two years, the Virgin Megastore had been alright, but it wasn't the same, it was dark and dingy but still large, with not as good a selection of stuff as HMV had.

Back to the present, last week I randomly wandered in to escape the office at lunchtime and found it dark, dingy, feeling much smaller than it used to. New albums and DVDs, that was fine, the selection of CDs seeming far smaller than it had used to. I went upstairs and wandered round the DVD boxsets, the entire floor felt cheap and unloved. I'm seeing box sets and films, ultra cheap. Back in the 90s a video with two or three episodes of a TV series would cost about £12-13. It would probably have cost about £50-150 for the whole of a season of an American TV series. Now it's costing £10 for 13+ episodes of a series. Is it me, or do other people get a feeling of devaluation? People stream music and only want to buy one or two tracks, there's the suggestion that the album is dying. Music feels like it's losing it's value, but so are TV series and films, 'œhere have a film out just six month ago, it's only a fiver!' I'm not sure what to make of it, I went back downstairs to escape the depressing air of worthlessness.

I wandered up the back of the shop, where they were now selling vinyl again, new pressings of old classics, The Cure's 'Head On The Door' and a double gatefold LP of '˜Disintegration' caught my eye, pleasantly surprising me, but price tags of £15 and £18 seemed a bit steep. I spotted Blur's 'Magic Whip' LP for £25! Which you might think given my experience upstairs, I am devaluing the art, but for fuck sake! I paid that for a mint copy of the KLF's '1987: What The Fuck Is Going On?'. I have bought vinyl albums by artists on Indie label, they cost £10 or not far above. How can anyone justify £25 for a newly released album, when smaller labels, printing far less copies, without the economies of scale can produce such items, for far less? It's pure greed on behalf of the labels and retailers. Someone needs to remind them that vinyl isn't just for hipster douchebags with gramophones.

FitBawbags

Life has been very busy at the moment, I've got a new job so I've been focused on that. The good news (or bad news) is that the podcasts will be back very shortly!

I live next to a football pitch for a local team. They don't take care of their ground, their fence fell down, they replaced it with fence you see on building sites, but left big wooden fence panels with large rusty nails sticking out of it. This would be fine if it was on their land, but it's not it's in our communal car park. We've been asking them to move it for over 8 months, we've spoken to the council about it too. 

Last weekend one of our dogs ran across said fence and punctured one of her tendons. It's cost around £300 in vets bills, but thankfully she seems to be recovering well. 

You'll notice I've not posted about anxiety in a while, the reason for this is that I'm managing fairly well. Avoiding confrontation is something I've been able to stop doing. My wife and I went over to talk to the "board" of said football club, all three of them. I'll refer to them as Forgettable, Anorak with 'tache and Heart Attack. Forgettable stayed fairly quiet throughout the exchange. The chairman Anorak with 'tache refused to look at my wife in the eyes, as they've fobbed her off for ages with promises of moving the fence and never done anything about it. My wife also gives them a hard time about people goign to the football using our car park. They really don't like her. Heart Attack is named as such as he informed us that he's just come back after recovering from a heart attack. All he seemed to do was stare at his phone when we were talking to him, trying to ignore us and chipping in weak and unhelpful remarks. I love my wife, when she knows she's in the right, she'll take on anyone. I've generally included my small part in this exchange. 

The following excuses were made for not moving the fence.

We've no been able to, we need more than two of us. I've just come back from having a heart attack.

Bollocks I can lift a panel fine, they'd just need to flip it over back onto their land. When mentioned that can you not get help from your players to lift it they're here a couple days a week. There was reaction along the lines that this was an unfathomable solution and that they players wouldn't help.

I'm not sure why Anorak with 'tache thought it was relevant to 

They never answered our question of "To some she might be just a dog, but school kids go past all the time, what if it had been one of them who got injured."

Heart Attack asked my wife what she wanted, she said an apology. Replying in an insincere manner that he was sorry and never once looking up from his phone.

At this point, I decided a bit of confrontation wouldn't go amiss... 

Me: Can you please look at me when you're talking to me? It's really disrespectful to keep playing with your phone while we're having this conversation.

Heart Attack: Ah'm listening tae ye. 

Me: It doesn't look like it, it looks like you're more interested in your phone and that is really disrespectful.

That for a lot of people won't seem like much, but for me that's a massive leap forward. The look on his face was priceless, like a teenager who's cornflakes had been shat on.

My wife then informed them they'd be getting the vet's bill and threatened them with the small claims court. Anorak with 'tache said it would be like getting blood out of a stone.

 

We wandered off after that, but here's the wee survivor in her The Cone of Shame(tm).

Roasterific!

I try not to judge people, I honestly do, but sometimes... yep and I've wandered into similar argument territory of "I'm not racist. but...". I was in Asda recently getting custom made pizzas for tea and there were a couple of scruffy/hard paper round looking blokes in the queue before me. The way one of them talked combined with the facial expression of horror and confusion when he was asked if he wanted any oils* on his pizza. It was a foreign concept to him, and so completely alien he was worried his pizza William Shatner would appear and steal his pizza and beam up to the Enterprise with it.

That made me feel so out of place, here's me quite happy to have garlic oil on my pizza but feeling, not superior, but pity that they seemed so closed minded. It's the inability to embrace an idea, it doesn't matter that it's a trivial matter like pizza. It's that they appeared to be dismissing the concept itself. It was like they couldn't understand why anyone would choose to do that.  They appeared stereotypical for how they were dressed and carried themselves. Pretty much "I agree with what it says in The Sun" types. 

A few days ago I was at a hospital and outside you see some funny sights, extremely haggard 40 a day smokers in dressing gowns and bunny slippers, clearly in hospital for some kind of respiratory illness, outside smoking, and I'm thinking? Just haggard or are they a junkie?

Why am I so bothered about this, I used to be far more judgemental and on sight, assume a lot of people were scumbags, and I was probably right half the time, but I didn't always know and I didn't make 

* They offer garlic, basil or chilli oils, if you're interested

Personal Discovery

From personal experience I often know what I want but need help realising it. Taking a fairly trivial example: Do I want pizza or Chinese tonight? I flip a coin to choose, heads for pizza, tails for Chinese... it's heads, that means pizza. Wait... I feel a little disappointed. I'm thinking about a pizza, imagining how it will taste, but I don't feel that's what I want tonight, I think I'd prefer Chinese, yes that's what I want. I think I wanted Chinese all along, but hadn't realised. 

The use of the coin here is not as a tool to randomly select what I wanted to eat, but to give me an option and allow me to think more about it, and decide if it's really what I want.

I don't know what you believe in personally, and to be honest, unless you're telling other people what to do or not do, it doesn't matter. I think it's possible to use tools like astrology, tarot and I Ching as self realisation tools, and learn about yourself through their use, without necessarily believing in them.

I am respectful of the tools and the processes used to bring about a reading, I feel that if an individual doesn't believe in the esoteric uses of these tools, they can still use them in a similar way to the coin example above. To help give them a different perspective, look closer at a range of decisions or problems to help understand them better and think about their intentions. By the same token, we want those who believe to feel comfortable that we are not taking the use of these tools lightly and are treating those tools respectfully. That way I feel I am fairly accommodating everyone. 

Here's where you think there's a trick, but how much will it cost to use these services? That's up to you, these are being done on a pay-what-you-think-it's-worth basis.

If was going to pay for advice, if it was unhelpful I'd feel aggrieved paying for it. On the other hand if it was useful I'd feel it was worth the money. I'm going to respond to requests for services, create documents, send them back to the user, and let them choose to pay if  a) they think it's worth something b) they can afford it.

If someone does not want to make a donation or cannot afford to, all I ask is that they that they do something nice for someone, walk their dog, make a small donation to a food bank next time they're in the supermarket, help an elderly neighbour garden, something to help someone else out.

There is a Facebook Page here!

This site below will be live as of 16:23 BST on Friday 23rd September. 

Personal Discovery Horoscopes - Offering natal charts, Tarot and I Ching.

*tap*tap* Is this thing on?

I'd been meaning to put a podcast together for about 3 or 4 years, and I never managed to get around to doing it until now. I decided I'd put 5 minute long podcasts that you can listen to while making a cup of tea, with random thoughts, the odd joke and me, well being me.

The idea is that I get things out my head, become more comfortable with the sound of my own voice, become more confident and can try and make something entertaining. Hopefully it will develop into something I really enjoy and get something out of.

It's already taught me, that I pronounce and highlight certain syllables in ways I don't expect, it does not sound the same way it does in my head! It's nice to be able to use it to improve my speech. 

I've put out a few already. One about the fringe while making a cup of tea, the second recorded on a short car journey about kids watching YouTube and bad drivers. The third is thoughts I'd been having about making changes in my life. The fourth which isn't out yet involves ghosts and a bit of spookiness, recording that later so let's hope it goes well!

It's available to listen to here, or you can subscribe via iTunes. 

The 'I Drink Tea' Podcast

Please leave a review, and yes I'm aware of the dodgy audio quality!