Author: basgallop

Giraffe

now if only, if only, i were a giraffe, i would feast on flowers all day long

Richard Basgallop ?… in the evenings tho, i would play tiddlywinks.. and maybe dance the hornpipe. so there

Richard Basgallop and, just remembered, they have the most amazing liquorice black prehensile tongues!!!

Jane Robbie Och you would probably save some and make a flower chain to adorn around your ossicones (giraffe’s antlers to you!!) x

Richard Basgallop antlers! you mean those gnobbly things?? spare ears

Claire Treharne yes sometimes when you smell a really good rose I feel convinced they should be for eating or snorting or somehow ingesting!! mmmm ;O) or how about being a bumble bee, that way you could get right inside them and dust their pollen on your sides then go and do a little dance to share the pollen pot with everyone else:o) !

Richard Basgallop ooh i like the image of the bee dancing. cha cha cha. indeed what joy to be swaddled deep within the heart of the petals, to bee enveloped, to nectar bathe in flower yum juice! bzzz
… also, also i remember being at the temple of brahma, by the holy lake in in pushkar, chatting with the flower sellers at the door, apparently you are not supposed to sniff the Roses, they are an offering for the god and their pong is for the deity alone… so of course i got 2 flowers one for the god and one for me.. wandering around with it rammed up me hooter! Roses are just the best… still i imagine brahma to be the huge universe wide yawn slumbering lord of creation… so i hope he probably wouldn’t mind?!!

Spirulina Beard

spirulina beard! sounds repulsive, i know, whilst draining the dregs from the vat of algae, a plume of irridescent powder has daubed my beard a virulent hue of green… its actually quite dashing in a bird of paradise errol flynn boudoir kinda way… yes… bored, irish folk music, full blast, diddly i, diddly aye, and on with the household chores, washing up ahoy!

Hengist the bonkers Viking

ha! just spent a very enjoyable hour rummaging through some of my old travel letters home, mum, bless, kept all my bewildering correspondence and handed them back to me last year!
i haven’t found the enthusiasm to re-read many of them yet … till now. but their hilarious! i have exactly the same wonderful pompous florid style, but scrawl handwritten, page after page after page, amazed and rather pleased to find i haven’t evolved one jot.
mostly though the letters are lovely, for their ability to summon the faces of old friends and the flavours of long forgotten adventures… today at least. hurrah for the past!!!
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Richard Basgallop oh and pic is 86, ko samuii? or mbe ko sammet? me scrawny from india and hengist a bonkers viking in a thong, who was determined to introduce me to mushies, moon parties and ozzie women… top bloke!

Nicky Guy I’ve just done the same String! I’ve got two big boxes full of old letters and photos and it’s hilarious looking through them! I’ve got some of your old letters too! Plus all the letters I wrote to Mum and Dad from every trip I’ve been on. …and a couple of travel diaries. Some great stories that I had completely forgotten :))

Richard Basgallop he he, enjoy your wallow! good fun ‘eh, i was just thinking how lucky i am, i got to write letters to my folks (and even my grandparents!) friends, sometime lovers and then on my past few trips to my kids. amazing!
slightly tempered by finding out that Finn, then age 13ish never read any of them to S, soulless, surly teenage brute! x

Richard Basgallop oh and feeling generally wafflesome… one of the letters i read was from hungary, and turkey! me and flaps hitching across europe, trying to get past the baffling kafka bureaucracy to go on the trans siberian express, strip searched by german customs, and a lift from a bored eccentric oxford uni drop out, 5hr around the bodensee, he meant to take us only 10 mins down the road, he was suffering from a mystery illness and insisted on stopping to play frisbee every 5 mins!

Richard Basgallop the other letter was from an abandonned log cabin halfway along the triglav trail in the slovenian mountains, me and shiv breaking up the furniture to cook spaghetti (al dente!) in a huge hail storm

Richard Basgallop ?… and most marvelous to keep on having new adventures too!!!

Bil Rose DEEELISHUSSSS!!!!! xxxx

sumptous pong

sumptous pong of lilacs, piddinghoe midst the persistent drizzle, admiring the sinous curves of the incinerator, launched across the river, my! just like the ark, all the time with good cheer ‘…and i won’t forget to put Roses on your grave’

oh! i’d presumed this was an original, but looks like its the stones, but their version is an upbeat stomp, lacks the maudling yearn… but hey ho, some might like to see them in their pomp!

http://youtu.be/fTjni_t3MgY

a trudge

a trudge, with trusty dog, up the hillside, thru the ruddy, stodgy devon mud
beneath the discerning stare of brute huge, swag bellied cows,
quietly about their lumbersome bother, some glower… with menaces
the clod and the pebble… thought babbles schoolboy blake.. ha, gravity is a myth, like the earth sucks
into the woods, the grey skies coax the clamour of colour: from bluebells, from campions,
sets free the vibrant, myriad hue of green, all is mottled, daubed, expansive
the euphoric flourish of each and every leaf, oh beautiful floozy spring!
a patina of birdsong.. ‘tell all secrets, tell all secrets’
just for a moment, i put aside these burdensome words, one step further, free from thought, to fumble on, into the joyful breath of the world, which tumbling, burgeoning, always is and forever thus

what point to prod at that which is beautiful? just to break what i do not understand… for it is not with the muffled thoughts which knock in the head… nor even the lithe sparkle, the mountain torrent that spouts from the tongue… rather it is with the dumb warmth, cocooned within the heart. love