10000 miles of tough luck, three spoons and a basset

Holiday
Originally uploaded by derAmialtebloede.

This is actually quite embarrassing. So Tom has this baseball bat, like, a proper one. You can see why people keep them under their beds; they're massive, and quite a scary thing. So the other day I was in bed, and I heard this crashing from downstairs. It doesn't sound good. So I go downstairs in my dressing gown and there's this little chinese guy in our house. He doesn't seem to be up to any good, and no-one else is about. Maybe someone had invited him to stay and not informed me, but I think it was more likely he was trying to rob us. He hadn't noticed me. So I went and got the bat. I came into the front room with the bat, and challenged him. He just lunged at me, but I rebuffed him with the bat. Then it gets a bit awkward. I chased him out of the house with the bat, but in the scuffle, somehow I managed to a) lose the dressing gown, and b) get locked out of the house. There I am, trying to get back in with nothing but a bat to shroud my modesty, shouting and cursing and banging on the door. I think one of the neighbours must have called the police. Now they assumed I was a madman and took me away. No charges were pressed, thank goodness, and when we got to the station, which is quite close by, they let me go home and even gave me a big blanket to wrap myself in. They kept the bat, however.

I have, of late, lost all my mirth.

Well, in a manner of speaking. I do seem completely incapable of going out and, for want of an infinitely better phrase, 'socialising'. I don't seem to have the knack any more. Either I attempt to go out and manage to choose a day when everyone seems more up for a 'quiet night in'; or I get all excited but find myself sound asleep by quarter past ten. Plus much of the time we end up going somewhere where I can't hear a darn word anyone is saying as I've got much issues with my hearing and it's hard to find somewhere of a weekend in Brighton that isn't packed and loud. I will get the knack of this in time, I hope. After dozing off last night in the Penthouse (perhaps the scene is just too soporific), I did wake up a bit on the journey home, and tried deep frying. I made onion rings and battered pepper and one battered garlic, but they're not quite right. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong. I was thinking of chopping up some garlic and coriander and mixing it with the batter. This might work.

A Moustache Trilogy

1. Upper Lip

I am sure your lip was never that size before
I never really noticed your upper lip
As particularly suprising
Before
Difficult to recall

A good lip, I’m sure
Not worthy, perhaps
To rise above
The forest of upper lips
That shrouds my memory

Perhaps that moustache you had
Has stretched it.

2. ‘with epicurean fervour’

Oh forested plateau
Oh wolfish moustache
The woodcutter approaches
Brandishing his axe

3.

Lip hair here.
Here hair, there.
Lip hair there.

Here, lip hair
Here, hair here.
Lip hair here.

Here lip, here.
Here hair, there.
Lip hair, where?

Here, lip, there.
Where hair? There.
Hare lip here.

Matt the Cripple is in town. He has currently a broken arm, which happened in a fall from a window, fifteen foot to the ground. This was due to the fact that the human pyramid that previously held him up had departed, leaving him to try to climb through the alas too small window. He was being put in plaster in Bath hospital when he left, stealing his x-rays, and getting on a train to Brighton. He took the x-rays to Brighton hospital but they didn't want to have anything to do with it.

Lucy is also in town. After an unsuccessful fling with John Leslie, the 'celebrity rapist', she is back to exact revenge after he sung an offensive song about her and placed it on his myspace page. Whether she will succeed where Ulrika Johhnson et al have failed is yet to be seen.

I also had a visit from a beautiful girl with a glass eye. Replete with John Prescott t-shirt and Mark Thatcher iconography, Annie Hell rolled into town. We bought sparklers, watched Neighbours (there is now a blind girl, Sky is pregnant and Stingray is the father but he doesn't know, Karl and Susan are back together but he slept with Izzy after she accidentally drugged him with sleeping pills, Lou's russian fiancee has been kidnapped by the russian mafia so he is now moving his considerable charms onto Janelle, and Max has gone on a meditation weekend with Katya and a bag full of salami. His visions involve him winning the World Cup but Katya's meditation has a more saucy nature, and Max himself is the subject. Of course, I knew all this already as I've been reading the episode summaries on neighboursfans.com since the TV broke, but it's nice to see Neighbours in the flesh now and again.

Real Ale Poem no. 2

Kronenberg
is spelled Kronenbourg
And Foster's
Has an apostrophe

It costs ten pounds to join CAMRA
And women
Get in free.

Tom has been befriending nazis on the internet. This is why we have this rather splendid picture of Hitler on the beach. The nazis tend to have photographs of hitler, blonde tennis players, and maps, for some reason, on their Fliicr accounts.

He also went back to his old house and rescued his guitar and keyboard. The keyboard is a power-synth and it has no end of fantastic sounds it can make. It looks like the floundering musical act that was Pukulele might just have a new lease of life.

Oh, and I am now a Master of Arts in English Literature. Splendid. A befitting qualification for a barkeep like myself. I have spent the last week making a big list of plans. Ideally, if all goes according to plan, I will be an auctioneer by june!

Custard Apple

fried chicken head anyone?
Originally uploaded by Francesen.

So on the close-to-second anniversary of Andy's neighbourly "Happy Halloween Neighbour" trauma, Rosanne attempted to up the ante by putting a PIGS FACE on the wall of our Landlord's house. Thankfully Jed stopped her and confiscated the pigs face.

"I'm at the bottom of Trafalgar Street ... I've got the pig's face ... nobody else likes him but I have him..."

More on the face to come. The other day we were sitting on Tom's roof to admire a beautiful sunset (hippies! I cuss you bad!) when it turned out Jed was having a bath. This discovery was made as we saw him through his window from Tom's roof. "Perverts!", he shouted, as we bade a hasty retreat from our voyeuristic delight.

Tom is back, by the way, sans dog. We tried to ask him about it, but he's not saying anything. He looked like he had been living in a ditch for a week. He's re-reading The Wasp Factory. God Jesus Christ.

Andy has moved into his new house with Jools and Andy K and Erica and Cassia and Jana. It used to be owned by the man who owned the Ocean Rooms with very much the same decor, a pink-and-silver theme on the walls and padded vinyl flooring. The pombear already has his paws in the drawers.

Poetry Slam Final yesterday. I came a thoroughly disappointing fourth. Cheered myself up by drinking far too much and making a scene. Perhaps. What I definately did is accidentally end up making unfavourable remarks on some kind of interview for Brighton TV (whatever the heck that is). Oh well. There's still quite a chance no-one will ever see it. Going to take a different approach to Poetry night in the new year. Ah well. Jimmy was splendid as usual with fake stick-on-sideburns and a torrent of haiku. Dan Riviera captivated the audience with an epic psychedelic sprawl of power. Mark Gwynne Jones was there, but thoroughly disappontingly failed to read any poems at all. And yes, of course, Disraeli won, but you can't really fault the poetic prowess of someone who's been to Iraq and seen what's going on out there. A lesson our political leaders need to learn, I believe.

So the Pigs Face. There was an offal-festival at the Pull and Pump. Daniel Taylor managed to remove the face from a pigs head and they engaged themselves in a photoshoot session, encouraging members of the public to wear the face as if it was their own, whilst Tom took photographs. Eventually the inevitable happened. Daniel was branded a 'sicko' by an angry girl, who took a swipe at the face with her bag. The face got tangled with the bag. The girl began to fight the face, stomping it with her pointy little shoes. Daniel wept in shock and surprise at the sudden demise of his art. The girl left. The pig face lay, injured but not beyond rescue, on the floor.

I think at this point I had already left. We ended up in the Fish Bowl with Seamus. Girlies!

Fireworks night. We didn't go to Lewes. Instead we climbed up a big hill, found ourselves trapped in the race course, but managed to escape, and found ourselves upon a great plateau above the city, watching the fireworks burst. They were holding a dog show in the next field but all the butterfly lions and puff dogs were distressed by the loud noise. The sturdy pug, however, remained cheery and resilliant. No community bonfire.

Book.

IMG_8021
Originally uploaded by bumpoowilly.

Bought the most incredibly titled book the other day.

Let me take you down

The true story of Mark David Chapman, the man who shot John Lennon.

Hopefully the book will be good also. How could it not be?