Category: audio

‘why the long face?’ Basgallop, Exeter University. Your starter for 10… Test driving the funky scarf mum knitted…with a new friend, mongst the seasonal drab

watched Inception on netflix yestereve… excellent entertainment for a not going out january night had forgotten what a great film it is!

from its ‘man washes up on a beach’ opening, to the perfectly weighted ambivalence of the final shot… gripping

works well just as a straight action film… fight scenes as the world tumbles over!

possibly it’s fast pace sleight of hand conceals that its not quite as clever as it thinks it is (true of all of us too!)

but personally i love the mind and space bending psychological tricksiness… ‘a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma’

fairly noir in a Blade Runner kind of way, with many a nod to Citizen Kane – was watching a doco on Orson Wells but the night before

in retrospect, quite a cast too… had no idea Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Pete Postlethwaite were in it too

‘And why Not’ in my best Bazza Norman tones

oh and escher pics obvs

porridge with raspberries? yes? no? feel i have finally jumped the porridge shark
i know my McFarlane forbears would give me a drek look of despair… ‘ye cannae do that, porridge is for fixing the roads round here’
still they would have shrugged with approval of my choice of music… Dick Gaughan Porridge ftw
on the epic cycle it was essential ballast for a days pedalling, porridge the universal solvent, alkahest in alchemical terms…
best with banana and peanut butter, but literally bung in anything! tahini, seeds, honey, cinnamon…
my own preference would be for a yin yang bowl… savoury on one side, sweet to the other. yum
wrap up warm… icicles on the end of my conk on this mornings pedal

Wild Geese – Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

ah ben i was thinking about you when out on my bike this morning, so sad your gone
somewhat of an abrupt change of mood, but life is all sorts of emotions rolled up together… public but nestled away in a comment
hold your loved ones close, it can be harsh out there
i know they’ll be a moment at the next festie, skanking away down the front, to turn and somewhere in the crowd, half imagine your face…earnest yet amused
i’ll light a candle… travel well x

……………………………………………

‘then we would cook only porridge, of which i’ll share with youuuuu’
to end, a love song from his mighty bob-ness

Marie: aaahhhhhh a sexy ready break. I’m having oats and super bruised fruit. January gruel I’m comparison to yours :))

me: ah ready brek glow, always seemed somewhat radioactive! xx

laura: I have it with tahini and agave and blueberries and raspberries too! Every morning! Breakfast of champions 

me: tahini deffo, blueberries hugely acceptable, but tahini and blueberries? hmm vonnegut for your guts! x

tho so bewildering my mood today… the mere mention of blueberries has me maudlin along to lilac wine… probs teh jeff buckley rather than elkie brooks version, but can’t be sure with my tuneless-ness

Ross: Traditionally the Scots only had water, oats and salt in their porridge – for the simple reason that those were the only ingredients they had available. These days put what you like in your porridge I reckon. Am sure our ancestors would have done if they could

me: good point! i agree, but there is possibly a streak o’stern in calvinism? our ancestors tho would have guzzled avocados by the barrell load, of that i am sure
we do indeed live in a bubble, a realm of rare plenitude… worryingly, how long it will last i do not know.. xx

Ross: I’m actually quite partial to a bit of stern calvinism from time to time.. but yes maybe just don’t worry about it and we can enjoy the avocados and raspberries while they last 

wot emperor nero would scoff for breakfast… weirdly delish (i think?) seldom eat avos in this country on ethical grounds… but this one looked like it was going off… yeah yeah

seldom suggest anything imagining it to be absurd, all that does is plant the seed of possibility x

Tax Return Day… hopefully, if i don’t get distracted… under the cudgel of winter… these the porridge days… first task is to juice up a storm and chuck a Rainbow down my gullet
yum! first appearance of the year for nettles and cleavers in the mash up. such the vibrancy of colours, feel as tho i have pulverised all the chakras of a small flock of birds of paradise!
oh and on my bike ride, down on the beach i saw 2 jackdaws with white feathers in their wings… i digress … another selfie, and a traditional annual post, yup
yoga and meditation… cumbia, or possibly gregorian chanting on the headphones…. i’m so ready… a blizzard of old illegible receipts and a daunting wall of perplexing legalese
see ya on the other side

comment from lou:

I did mine yesterday

What should probably take 2 hours took 10.. intermingled with essential tea breaks, meandering, staring into space, a little snooze, more tea, 4 meals etc etcI called on lion for courage to get through..

Got there.. with renewed intentions to get someone else to do it next year 

me:

superstar! aw well done, tho how you managed on only 4 meals is astonishing, you must have been famished….

i have yet to start, thought i’d fix one small teensy bug in project code, which has dragged me to the brink of existential despair

who wrote this Rubbish! oh me!… anyway i’ve announced i’m doing it, so mote it be… i call upon the power of the duck billed platypus!

for ermmm it’s cuss awkward unlikely success… they’re taking over the world doncha know.. back to it… or getting ready to do it, almost the same thing xxx

Caroline Lucas… Heroic.. Superb MP!… Tho sadly not my constituency…
Sure she’s had an impressively formidable week up in London… But still manages to turn up to a small demo in town, brief speech not just on brexit but emphasising the need for a change in economic system…
She was a bit late, probs had to pop by extinction rebellion march too ( tho I dunno)…
Most community events she’s there, lost count of number of times I’ve seen her in street…
A perfect representative of many of the things I love about Brighton town…
Me I was just out from singing… Tho that’s important too, ha! X …
oh and I framed with hug mural behind Art innit!

Still Life (still alive!) with Overripe Persimmon, Potato and Poetry, these have all had a part in my, actually quite cheerful, morning so far
eccentricity is often but the allowing of the untethered?
Oh January, such ungainly insomnia… awakening, once more, at absurd O’Clock, I lie overlong in a tepid bath
so to soothe smooth something of those unruly thoughts… at first crepuscular dusk, then a light which summons itself with a can’t be arsed shrug
announcement of drear grey to us the still breathing

i like the lurk of larkin shadows in the pic!

pucker up! happy 2019!

the year for all of us to snog more dragons
i wish for you, the same as i wish for myself, a year and a yield of more and deeper connections… both with each other, and with the land on which we are blessed to dwell
we are woven together and it is this that grants us our strength… is that a permaculture principle? dunno… now entering hippy warp drive
mirror neurons, we profoundly feel and experience that which others around us feel… this the privilege of primates
profoundly social animals, we are nothing, in fact we do not even truly exist, on our own… it has always been the story of us! lets make it a good one
have courage… literally coeur the way of the heart
ha, the irony, not lost on me, that the man spouting most voluminously about connection required to take another selfie as home alone with myrtle the dragon
… then chooses to flourish it on a platform, which is ersatz connection, realm of pout then preen of ego
yep yep quagmire, doldrums, exhaustion the words most frequently on my lips at this the fag end of the year
but but but… i mean what i say! … i had to get my bum wet sitting on the floor to take a snap, proof!
and yes, always try to say it with charm… charm and a dollop of imagination
of course, do more yoga, eat lots of chocolate

yet, so far as possible….
dwell in anahata, the heart space mind… wishing us all… love x

lots of happy new year wishes!

thanks guys, honey HNY right back at ya!
managed another brief sea swim at end of cycle, a lovely day out there… and a dip a fine way to change whatevers lurking in your head
aw and can’t resist playing old songs from my generation, mama club praha 92, for me
the song, obvious but: a somewhat feisty youthful scottish band, extraordinary producer, copious loved up stimulants. kapow!…. like any idealism doomed to crash and burn, but such a way to go
come together as one

Rosie: Happy New Year Lovely

fanx… hope the cornish/devon atlantic remains wild, wooly and rugged! xx

ah such plump luxuriance of line! some fab sketches… mostly Rosetti
i love figurative art and have been thinking a little of the pre-Raphs on my drive home today
partly because Burne Jones lived in Rottingdean, some marvelous stained glass in the church there,
i imagine him and kipling (doubt they were friends or even their lives overlapped in da village!)
scoffing cakes quaffing tea in the Rose garden at the Grange (library)… ‘exceedingly good Rudyard’
then ambling off along the undercliff, unbuttoning frock coats and dabbling blue white victorian toes in the ocean

hmm what to make of the pre-Raphs?!
like most folk, often find their finished works drift towards twee Romanticism, rather backwards looking, a somewhat british trait even then…
yep, you’d imagine the subject matter would be something that would appeal, mythpoetic, images as lucid and laden as a tarot card
but its a bit like tennyson? and who reads him nowadays?
Why were they not seemingly looking at the world of change and turmoil happening all around them?
or for that matter, all that was about to happen across the channel, the first twitches of the seismic shift to modernism, an age of upheaval and revolution
so yep, lets paint Sir Launcelot in a dashing, fashionable brocade frock
slight frothy swoon to their art… hard to know quite what to make of it, men looking at women, in a post john berger, lacan scoptic vision kinda world?
erring on the side of generosity, the women were always their muses, lovers, sisters… occasionally both
oops just typing words, with no real direction or imagination… i shall stop

oh and more lovely schmaltz to wallow in

and, bizarrely audrey hepburn in Rottingdean

off pinterest… louis someone (apols didn’t note his name), a non disney illustrated version of the jungle book x

oh and as i’m seemingly still commenting on this post

william morris, one of burne jones best mates… socialism and wallpaper, a love triangle and the peculiar flavour of Ruskin-esque medievalism… gotta love the victorians (and Radio 4)… tho melvyn is a bit crank grumpy on this one… listened on the bus when the road home was shut… armed police!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b9w0vq

‘i was late, it was raining, it’s hard to huddle on your own’
solstice dawn, nadir of the year, ebb, this the dwindling of the light, darkness encroaches. blessings to y’all
ha, of course i have tweaked both the dinge and pathos levels, all is performance, masters of artifice
yet as it’s the season of holly and homily:
time to hunker down and gnaw on bone (quorn burgers!), ponder long on both personal and collective futures, it is late, but mbe not as late as we think?
most of the fears that we find in the darkness, but not all, are things that we have flung there, far from us and our circle of light
allow, be comfortable with these the dark familiars, it may well not be alright, but ‘it is’
midst the sullenness, possibly, easier to feel the seed of light?
….
anyway it was proper windy up on the cliff, watery kersplosh wave chaos beyond the harbour walls, picture, ‘whaling vessel beleaguered by storm, heads for safety of harbour’ doesn’t really demonstrate, dang
christmas soon! glug whisky, dance to neil diamond, that sorta stuff x

an interesting kabbala type short talk i was listening to t’other day:

Dave: Love this post mate – wishing you an excellent Christmas, catch you next year!

cheers fella, keep meaning to write to ya, in appreciation of sys etc, but like everyone underwhelmed by my energy levels… festive blessing to you and fam xx

Wendy: Love your turn of phrase mister x

Thanks! and i, in turn, adore your writing m’dear
it’s fun to acknowledge, then try and speak something about say the solstice, all the obvious themes and structures in place, truth is through feeling into nuance
like you, this year, i felt it important not to immediately gulp at the longed for light, but rather be comfortable and nestle, here, with the darkness and exhaustion
your words usually have a calmness, an almost serene flow to them

wheras, ha, mine often are a bulging, confused, exuberant gallumph! I want to be beautiful and funny at exactly the same time
which is quite a reach, so usually i topple over midst a tyrannical polyphony of glottal stops (see!)
anyway wishing festive greetings to you and yours, hope to see ya soon! xx

Wendy: Ah thanks for your words about my words I love your natural exuberance that comes through in your writing, an electric staccato that has a gorgeous poetic flourish to it. It’s all you and I love that truthful expression 

We meet in lyrical x

Wendy: Always

Nicki: Wow what an amasing description of christmas .. thankyou ..x

it is good isn’t it, like his voice too… lovely to see ya at the devi bhavar, pop over whenever ya fancy for some proper winter loitering xx