Month: May 2007

St Wulfrans

What’s yer favourite church?
I was over at St Wulfrans in Ovingdene yesterday.
a splash of yellow daffs outside the front porch, a yew tree, crows cawing.
I fell asleep. a snooze in the sunshine in the graveyard! Something to do with those commands to ‘Rest in Peace’.
Jumping Jehosophines!

I really like the fact that i can walk out of my front door, through East Brighton park, then, up, up, past the chalk Whitehawk, over the golf course and be completely in the countryside.
there are these amazing plough shire horses, enormous hulking beasts bigger than Sherman tanks!

I’ve never been inside St Wulfrans, always locked, but i really like the name which is blatantly Saxon and maybe part Red Indian
the church is a typical Downs one, built from Flint, which you always find lying about amidst the chalk.

…after the church i bumped into Suzy a dreadlocked mum from the school (her kids called Jacey Blue, yep, they all have weird names), whenever i see her i always think ‘face like the back of a bus!’
actually she’s beautiful, but also one of those people who appear on teh side of Brighton buses, you know, the ones with a slogan, encouraging you to dump your car.
It always spooks me out, when her bus goes by, to see her fizzgog, 12ft high!

…aaah i am rambling about my ramble.. onto the Kipling gardens in Rottingdene, an ice cream and stroll home along the undercliff path… home… just in time for the antiques roadshow

aidan: For a while I was haunted by an old flame adorned on the side of the buses. It would always give me shivers when she would appear, 8ft high right in front of me at a crossing.

12ft high images, kinda reminds me….
….of when i spent a winter in Sheff, in a sprawling student house which backed right out onto Meersbrook park.
The house was full of climbers, pupeteers, artists… and me
everyday in the kitchen, huddled around the 3 bar electric fire, drinking endless cups of tea from a dribbling teapot
Theresa, the artist, her work was figurative, so she spent a lot of time just sketching us all.
Whilst sketching she’d always be asking lots of personal questions ‘tell me all about your first love?’, her theory being that when people talk about themselves, it shows some of their soul.
Felt a bit unfair to me, as she knew i fancied her, just a teensy bit.

In may i went to visit her in her studio, down ‘blast furnace lane’,
a big, old, near derelict victorian warehouse… nowadays, i ‘spect, it’s yuppy loft flat appartments… the whole of the north of England , so i hear!

I brought her a large bag of cherries, so we sat in 2 deckchairs, chomping, then spitting out the pips.
Looking up there was this huge 12ft or so canvas, apparently of me.
Just the head and the hands in detail, the rest barely, faintly sketched in, she claimed ‘the renaissance masters only ever painted teh face and hands, they left the clothes and the backgrounds to their apprentices!’
I was more ‘but he’s got a big nose… he looks nothing like me… he’s, he’s well ugly’
she responded ‘that’s because it’s a representation of your soul… not a likeness of your physique’
ha
Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Sailor, Rich Man, Poor Man….

not one of her piccies, but similar, continuing the cherry theme!

RB:

sleep walking

once i was staying in a hostel in Barcelona, big old mixed dorm room with lots of bunk beds, everyone had been out drinking and was in a boisterous mood.
got woken half way thro’ the night by some oaf stumbling about, looking for the loo. He was clearly a bit drunk and a lot sleep walking.
He stopped and p*ssed all over the poor bloke sleeping in the lower bunk!
Once finished he clambered back into bed, straight to sleep.
Half the dorm was awake by now, flabberghasted, but the bloke he weed on snored through the entire thing.
The next day nobody had sufficient gumption to tell him what had happened. how can you?!

Reminds me of the first cub camp i ever went on, Jeremey Rudge who was in our tent peed in his brand new sleeping bag. Unfortunately the dye wasn’t fast, so the next morning he emerged from his damp, sleeping bag cocoon… and he was bright blue from head to toe!