Author: basgallop

oh for the gift of brevity! shortwinded-ness a virtue
written some long ago lunch hour
………….

once upon a sometimes, i hitched a ride in a camper van from the european juggling festival in Verona, all the way up to Amsterdam.
the bloke who was driving said come and stay in my friends squat,
so we rocked up to this huge ominous Victorian Institution looking building.
When we arrived a 10 year old boy dashed over and gave us a note
he said ‘give this to them inside, it’s from my mother’
So we handed it over as we entered.
It was a note warning the squatters that the police were going to evict them the next day!
we felt like the prophets of doom. Don’t shoot the messenger!

The situation was that teh squat had been open for 14 years or so, and if they occupied it for a further week, under Dutch law it could never be evicted
The squat itself was horrible, not like our lovely Prague home, this place obviously once been great, but over the last couple of years had fallen apart through squabbles and now consisted of a few junkies, living in dank, miserable rooms.
Long ago, the building had been an orphanage and had a really sad, unhappy vibe about it, a place haunted by the ghostly children of it’s past.

That evening we were all sitting about in the squat bar, having a few farewell to teh squat tequillas, when in burst this mad, horrible amphetamine fuelled pirate of a man.
He was obsessed with defending the place and boss ordered everybody about, build the barricades!
I quickly grew tired of that authority and went outside to sleep in the van

Next Morning, got woken at about 7:00, piling out of vans were 100 black clad Dutch Riot squad complete with shields and batons.
Within moments they’d smashed down the door and surged inside.
There were the isolated squeals of a scuffle, but most of the squatters were half asleep and sleepy, sheepishly stumbling out into the street. A few with scarves draped over their face’s
for a minute an anarchist flag, waved above the building, stark against the skyline.
rapidly hauled down. All over.

That evevning we came back to pick up the van. The entire site of the orphanage had been flattened. The bulldozers had been called in. and within hours reduced the place to a pile of rubble. awesome. The Dutch are thorough.
…….
………………
hmmm… so I guess you won’t be staying there then!

Hmmm. well working at Epic isn’t too bad, though I do so enjoy the grumbling!
I’d be curious to here what other people did before they came here?
Any Zoo Keepers out there? Astronauts? Professional Flower Arrangers? Tell all

…………. I’ve had a few strange jobs but such a dank and dismal day, just distant day dreamy……
…………

Once I was doing some labouring work on a house back in the village where I grew up. Just me, so quite fun.

Mostly it was pulling down the old lathe and plaster ceilings.
I’d put King Sunny Ade on the tape player, then would whoop and bash along to the rhythm.
Huge plumes of dust, splinter sticks and muck. hurrah!

In one bedroom i found the remains of a mummified bird, the poor thing had obviously got in down the chimney, but been unable to escape. I felt it was sorta like the free flying spirit of the house, much as with Medieval Cathedrals, where they’d often find a preserved mummified cat between the walls or ‘neath the foundations.

Both my sisters were home at that time, so some days they’d pop by with sarnies for lunch. We’d go and sit by the duck pond where, summers gone, we used to catch sticklebacks with our fishing nets.
Over the previous 20 years the weeping willow trees had grown, but then so had we, so we were all still in the proper, appropriate scale and proportions.

Back in the house, peeling up the lino on the floor, I found that before laying it, they had spread newspapers around on the ground.
I gathered them up and set them in order, they were all from 1948!
The year Orwell wrote 1984 (he transposed the last 2 digits).
The news was all of Palestine and the declaration of teh state of Israel… and Stanley Matthews.
Come Tea break, I’d sit in a battered old deckchair, in this near bombed out, devastated shell of a house, cup of tea to one side and read the old, old news of yester year.
soothing

…………..

one summer i worked in a boardwalk town in maryland on the east coast of the states
i rented out deck chairs, umbrellas and boogie boards.
Thankfully mine was the most distant, peaceful stand on the entire coast.
mostly i’d snooze in the shade or read a book wearing this lovely pink starshell hawaiian smock poncho thing
also i learnt to juggle, partly because all the women seemed only to notice the hunky, baywatch lifeguards. can’t say i blame ’em

all evening I bussed tables in a restaurant, hurly burly of crockery and dirty dishes.
…Then we’d go out partying

Some days i’d skip the going home and straight to the beach stand in the morning
best bit tho’ was when the the waves were grandiose, i’d shut up shop and frolic in the surf, riding the breakers in with my boogie board, Geronimo!!

At the end of the summer i had a big pile of cash and caught a greyhound bus… to Guatemala

was he sacked? or did he jump ship?
how is the o’connor settling in?

did anyone else discover it was a bit of a waft on the windy side?
cycling in, had to pedal flat out, just to go down the hill of Sussex Square
would have been better whisking the duvet cover off the bed and sailing
swallows and amazons tack

Once our dustbin was blown over and i had to rescue the lid from down the road, cycle helmet at a jaunty angle, dustbin lid shield clasped to my breast, ready for the joust, chivalry, love, knight in shining amour…

…still going home should be super smoothe conveyor belt blown along

………. after moaning

nonsense, being buffeted it’s such good fun,
legs washing machine churning, trying to dent the wind
baggy clothes sucked back taut by the gale
a smear of grimace of a grin across my face, waaghh,
as though I am smudged up ‘gainst a window pane.
the rain, like being ‘slapped in the face with a damp flannel’

….. does though play havoc with my bobby charlton dreadlock combover

apologies if you’ve seen this piccie before, but there was a radio 4 prog about when Dizzy Gillespie ran for President in 1964
bebop jazz trumpeter, self styled clown prince of jazz
apparently he wanted Miles Davies as the head of the CIA

his autobiog was apparently called ‘to be, or not to bop’

this is my favorite song!
i have only ever heard it once, but it made me cry, some things just do.
i’m not too bothered if i never hear it again, because it probably wouldn’t be as good as i remember
The original is by Richard Thomson, but that wasn’t what i heard. just some mournful bloke with an acoustic guitar.
A folk song, they always sound so much better than the written down lyrics
‘that’s the price we pay, for the chains that we refuse’

dang forgot the actual lyrics!
oh and it reminds me of people i used to know

…………..
………………………….

Bees Wing
I was nineteen when I came to town, they called it the Summer of Love
They were burning babies, burning flags. The hawks against the doves
I took a job in the steamie down on Cauldrum Street
And I fell in love with a laundry girl who was working next to me

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee’s wing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child, oh she was running wild
She said “As long as there’s no price on love, I’ll stay.
And you wouldn’t want me any other way”

Brown hair zig-zag around her face and a look of half-surprise
Like a fox caught in the headlights, there was animal in her eyes
She said “Young man, oh can’t you see I’m not the factory kind
If you don’t take me out of here I’ll surely lose my mind”

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee’s wing
So fine that I might crush her where she lay
She was a lost child, she was running wild
She said “As long as there’s no price on love, I’ll stay.
And you wouldn’t want me any other way”

We busked around the market towns and picked fruit down in Kent
And we could tinker lamps and pots and knives wherever we went
And I said that we might settle down, get a few acres dug
Fire burning in the hearth and babies on the rug
She said “Oh man, you foolish man, it surely sounds like hell.
You might be lord of half the world, you’ll not own me as well”

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee’s wing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child, oh she was running wild
She said “As long as there’s no price on love, I’ll stay.
And you wouldn’t want me any other way”

We was camping down the Gower one time, the work was pretty good
She thought we shouldn’t wait for the frost and I thought maybe we should
We was drinking more in those days and tempers reached a pitch
And like a fool I let her run with the rambling itch

Oh the last I heard she’s sleeping rough back on the Derby beat
White Horse in her hip pocket and a wolfhound at her feet
And they say she even married once, a man named Romany Brown
But even a gypsy caravan was too much settling down
And they say her flower is faded now, hard weather and hard booze
But maybe that’s just the price you pay for the chains you refuse

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee’s wing
And I miss her more than ever words could say
If I could just taste all of her wildness now
If I could hold her in my arms today
Well I wouldn’t want her any other way

I saw half of this film last night, the middle bit, so a bit confusing, i thought it was lovely, very sweet!

much to my suprise i have a brief photo booth story ……..
Once I was in Victoria station, in the booth, perched on one of those swivel twizzle stools,
face contorted into a rictus grin, awaiting the permanent stasis of flash,
I hear some ferrety rustling outside, ‘oooh theres someone in there!’
Then the curtain is flung back and a beaming bewhiskered drunk announces ‘suprise!’
he shoves his face in, just as the blue light flashes. ha.

in a photo, trapped forever together
in the picture i’ve always liked the look of disdain and grumpiness on my face, apart from that i guess we could very well be brothers

whenever Finn is having his passport piccie taken, i always burst in for the last photo. fun!

………
I finally got around to watching amelie the other week, it’s brilliant, so sweet, gentle, playful and imaginative.
just how all films should be!

……………..
….. an excuse for another rambling travel shaggy dog tale about getting my passport photo taken in Kathmandu

On the way to the shop, jostling through the grubby, happy palaver of the streets I saw a beggar, fakir type.
Somehow he had dug a hole in the tarmac and had his head completely buried under the road. Just like an ostrich!
I’ve no idea how he managed to breathe.

The obvious drawback with this busking strategy being that there was no way he could see, if somebody ran off with all his cash?!

Next I met the ‘Official Nepalese Thriller era Michael Jackson Impersonator’, he was greeting people in the street, then periodically would give a Billie Jean Yelp, spin around, moonwalk then grab his crotch
Very impressive, I went over to greet him, he was wearing an alvin stardust glove. we shook hands.
he leaned in, stared into my eyes. ‘Black Hash? … Change Money… Good Rate’
Michael Jackson could have been my money changer!

The actual photo was taken by a man in a little shop, who held an old fashionned flash bulb above his head. look at the birdie.. 23 awww

anyway, the point of this tail, another amelie theme, missed letters
after having my photo taken i went to pick up my mail from poste restante.
This was yonks before the days of email and internet cafes.
You had to time your mail drops perfectly. Exciting! Often hadn’t heard from anyone in 3 months, then hopefully a big batch of letters.
crushing if there was nothing and you think checking your inbox every 2 mins is bad enough!

The post office in Kathmandu was very lax, you could just take anything away, i found a letter for Flaps and took that for him.
We had been travelling together for 3 months, but had separated in Maduraii, India i was always supposed to be catching up with him again, but in the end went a bit doolally in sumatra, what with the orangutangs and had to go home
Flaps ended up in Beijing leaving town on the trans-siberian 2 days before the army stormed Tiannamen square!

anyway i put the letter in my Rucksac, forgot about it, got back to England, letter migrated to a box and then up, up and away into my parents loft
….years later i found it
…. and presented it to him, unopened, an exact 10 years after he should have received it

he was very good about it. merely commenting that it was from a woman he’d fancied at the time, never seen again and that had he received it, it would possibly have changed the course of his life!

oh well

i got my brother a book on brighton ghosts for christmas,
apparently theres a grey nun ghost in the lanes, who wafts spookily along meeting house lane, before disappearing into a bricked up doorway.
I noticed the doorway at lunch
yikes! scooby doo, pesky meddling kids

sadly, i was unable to read further in the book, as am of a timid disposition and get the heebie bee gees to easily
I don’t believe in this ghost, but i do believe in some sort of spirit realm

didn’t max befriend a ghost in meeting room 4 basement?