Month: March 2024

Peace and quiet at home. Things don’t have to be achieved every day, particularly not on Easter Saturday, the middle of everyone’s favourite bumper weekend when the evenings get longer at last. Jesus is dead but tomorrow he’ll pop up again and give us all chocolate. Or is that Monday? It’s Monday I think. “On the third day”, and Good Friday is when he tied himself to the tree for wisdom and we all eat buns. But tomorrow we eat lamb because he’s the lamb and his flesh is biscuits, no it isn’t literally biscuits, yes it is literally biscuits, HERESY! GET THE TORCHES!

It’s all very jolly.

I didn’t achieve much. My concession towards being functional was to fry up a jar of pesto with red onion and chorizo and whatever else I could find in the fridge that needed eating, and to feed it to mister Hook and myself with pasta. He’s snoring in front of Band of Brothers with planes. I finished Mass Effect 1 – about seventeen years too late – and thoroughly enjoyed the difficult decisions you have to make. There’s lots of pithy morality in games from back then, but that was more or less when I stopped playing games as they were taking too much time. Now I can nip back in as the addiction part of my approach to them is in check. It’s not yet eleven and I’ve stopped for the night. I’ll never get as far as present day games at the rate I’m catching up and the hours I’m giving to the hobby, but with Lou in India I’m letting the teenage me have a bit of rein.

I forgot it was Easter Sunday tomorrow. I want to go for a long walk, but it’s one of the only days of the year I see my brother’s progeny. I might see if I can do both but I’m not banking on it. Only a week or two before I go on my little weird jolly to far off lands. I’m obsessively checking the weather out there. Won’t be much hotter than here. Hey ho.

Ahh and my body feels slow at the moment, just … shut down from long winter. A good prolonged active period will be a tonic. The curiosity of a very different culture will be enough to keep me on the front foot.

Good Friday, and I realised that the remote for the telly I dropped off today still had the batteries in it and they had dissolved. No life out of it at all. I’m hoping the problem lies with the remote control and not the tv set. I couldn’t switch it on even though the red light was showing. There’s a new control ordered on Amazon and I’ll be back to my friend’s place on Saturday or Sunday to see if that fixes it. Bum.

I thought my friend was teetotal these days so was disappointed to see that they’ve fallen off the wagon. Afternoon pint was almost impossible to refuse especially considering my proclivities and the fact that the weather is attempting to be spring. I managed just a single before heading to Richmond Park for a yomp, and a good walk easily counters the sluggishness.

It’s a proper body of land, Richmond Park. One of those places that we can thank the monarchy for, as I suspect it is their ownership of it that stops the plastic humans from putting buy to let flats on it. If there’s ever a populist movement to chuck out the monarchy and it gains traction you can be sure it’s because these pencil pushers who inhale when they’re laughing are after the incredible chases and deer runs we still have, to turn them into plastic. The narrative will be about tax money paid to them or other such things overlooking how our weird old institutions are the only thing keeping tourists coming to our failed state despite the added red tape we voted for cus we hate people who don’t look like us. The reality will be a land grab.

Tanya and I pushed out through the sludge and it made me think about Kumano Kodo at this time of year and the fact that it looks like it is basically a conveyor belt of men with cameras called Hubert Geschnaffelton V. It has been snowy there. Will it still be slippery? I’d best pack rainproof. My walking boots will stop me slipping off the edge, and even though Hubert has someone driving his luggage to the spa he’s staying in, if he can make it, I can make it blindfold.

Still I’m starting to pack my bags. This is unheard of for the normal version of me but I’m determined to prove all the internetties wrong as they tell me my itinerary is not possible because I’m not booking through an official tour group etc.

Nice evening yomp today with willing and swift company. I’m gonna aim for Box Hill on Sunday. Still not a hard walk but I’m building up gradually.

Dentist again and there’s a list as long as my arm of stuff that needs doing. I’m rubbing together the farthings as in my profession it is better to have gaps in the credit rating than in the smile. I’m not happy about it though. So much to do and much of it is pricey.

Home now though and enjoying a week where all I have to do is admin and tidying. Tomorrow another old piece of technology will be going away to someone who wants it. It’s hard to keep the direction of stuff outwards. Especially when old things sometimes find their place. My Camino rucksack. Bought for walkies, very well roadtested. Much loved. I finally found it today and I’m glad to have it. Packing will be easier by far for this short hike I’m doing in Japan. I won’t even need a sleeping bag. It’s the opposite of difficult, just very busy and hard to find official accommodation because of a plague of middlemen. It’s a holiday that I’m making awkward for myself on purpose. That’s all.

The cold has snapped again in London. Huge rainstorms and squalls off the river, peaceful sunny stormeyes in between, reminding us that we have done too much damage to be able to predict the seasons, even in temperate countries. Despite your drooling idiot schoolfriend who has inherited some idea that climate change is all invented by the rich liberals so they can eat more babies. The internet is making us more and more stupid, all of us. Those of us who were already stupid have gone to plant level in less than one generation. Wibble.

I’ve been pitching for some low level voice work around spirituality and psychedelics, which is on brand. I’m thrilled, as more and more stuff is popping up with that unforgivable AI drone. It seems things can still be done properly despite the noise. Likely it’ll land.

I’m looking for a scallop shell to tie to the end of my pack, and I’m thinking about what to bring on this walk and why. I’m doing it in reverse. It is mostly tourism these days. Sluggish Americans with cameras telling me it’s impossible to walk 8 hours in a day up hill and down dale. I’m not there to make friends. Maybe I’ll switch back into “Antisocial Joe” like I did on Camino where I derailed invites to sit with the group and tried to make out I spoke no English until they worked out I did, made it impossible not to, and gave me the nickname I was proud to carry. “I’m sorry, I’m not going to sit with you. I’m working through some things right now and want to be on my own.” “It’s Antisocial Joe!” This is why Putin wants to blow up America.

“They’ve been getting shorter recently, your blogs.”

I saw a friend. He called me out. I’ve been very very tired this month somehow. March can do that. And sometimes the strands of thought only have so much length. I mostly have been stopping when I run out of immediate thinking. My habit is perhaps flawed, writing just before bed, as my brain function peaks in late afternoon these days. That’s when I make interesting connections and have clear thoughts. Come night and I’m largely stymied, not really able to think beyond immediate experience. This is why I’ll often write about being in the bath, when five hours earlier I fought an army of intelligent badgers on Mars. I’ve already forgotten the badgers. Immediacy is all I’ve got left.

Almost April so I’m gonna have to do some more booking for Japan tomorrow. Maybe finally send invoices ahead of the trip. And dig out my driving licence or reorder it. I didn’t want to spend the money I’ve earned before I left. I want the option of eating food that is better than instant noodles, so I’ve sat on loads of invoices. Tomorrow might be a laptop day.

Walking is a thing suddenly. I need to walk lots in the next few weeks. Any of you who like a hike without much fanfare attached to it, I’m gonna be swinging up random hills and looking at old stuff in order to remind my body how to shift it without aching. I’m off pilgrim for a tiny amount of time, mostly I’m tourist, but I don’t want to find myself in pain on the trail. Everyone keeps telling me how hard it is and I honestly don’t believe a word of it. They’re primarily internet commenters so they arguably won’t be very physical. I could probably beat all of them in a wrestling match.

But yes, I’m not working much so if you fancy a walk I’m right there with you. Just message me to arrange it. Bits of work might come, but mostly this is downtime. I’m ok with that and walking is free. There’s plenty to see. It’s better in company.

Today was about visiting. More days like that please. I’m still recovering from very odd sleep the last few nights and seeing friends helps me ground. Eclipse season is creeping into the nights. I used my occasional membership of Chelsea Physic Garden to wander there in the pre-spring morning, but there’s no yomping to be had in that garden. I need some yomping practice.

Wow. Today hit me like a rock. I wasn’t drinking last night. I didn’t set an alarm as no work this week. I thought I’d probably wake naturally at about half eight. My blinds were open.

I woke from absence at noon. I was in deep dream and this life had no relevance to the person I was inhabiting. This is double strange because I usually have a hand on the tiller with dreams and I was lost utterly but woke with recollection. Full moon eclipse on me after a number of promises to myself and suddenly I’m sucked into other realms and incarnations. There was nothing of danger or unpleasantness in it. But I must have needed to utterly stop all functions and recharge in the moon.

Occasionally I’ve run into dreampeople I’ve met in the real world. Usually they’re just lost or I’ve found them on purpose. Very rarely they’re doing the lucid thing too but they’ve had to learn it and they think they can “Inception” people or somesuch – (that’s not a thing). I’m definitely the guy who could beat Freddie Kruger in how I skip through dreams with awareness, and avoid the pitfalls. My dreams are a safe place and have been ever since my grandma taught me to lucid dream to stop awful nightmares and screaming wake up every night for so long as a tiny child. Dandy lion taught me lucid dreams. I think I wrote about it years ago.

But yeah, last night and this morning I was flat out, still buzzing but with no control. My last memory of dream was clearing out spiders for The Donmar Warehouse, but a version of it that looked like Wilton’s Music Hall. I was working in dream theatre. But as we know, spiders know webs. I got momentarily caught in a dreamweb. I was discharged with no injury and feeling strong enough to do what I need to do.

The full moon intentions are big, so the recalibration sleep makes sense. Tonight and onwards I’ll likely be back to lucid so it’ll be nice to see anyone who wants to pop in. Meanwhile it’s just gone midnight. I’m gonna make a camomile tea with a slug of Derbyshire sugarwhisky. It’s a sleeping pill and it gets through whisky that should otherwise be burnt. Means hopefully I won’t rocksleep until noon again.

Eclipse season, and it’s a full moon in Libra tonight. My sign. A spring moon so always a time to think about new beginnings. With the eclipse it is also a time to think about what we are doing to block ourselves. That’s been my contemplation today. There’s plenty of little blocks I’ve allowed to creep in, and perhaps the talisman of this moon is a useful one for taking the final steps beyond such things. Coming as it does on my down day, after the lovely Scene and Heard run but before I have to start worrying about the next job.

I’ll sleep with the blinds up tonight I think. It might be a bit breezy but good to get the moonlight and to think about intentions. What I’m going to try and drop from my habits, what I’m going to try and encourage in. Today I was pretty sedentary, and I’m going on a tough walk shortly. I’ll need to be getting myself out into the springtime if I’m not working. And I had too many beers last night post show. Bad for the bank balance and for the energy levels. Midnight is past. I don’t deserve to be tired after such a lazy day, but sleep is calling and bed is warm and I’ll definitely sleep.

I think I’ll write a little list before I go to bed. A spot of ritual. Something simple but a clear call out to the things I’m blocking myself with. It’s helpful to know the name of the things you want to defeat. The death season is ending now, with the 23rd behind me, so I can leave the ghosts of the past in the past where they belong and look once more not just to my beloved now, but to a projected future. Let’s see what can be manifested.

Happy full moon season, happy rebirth, happy spring. It ain’t hot yet but it’s coming.

I’m listening to politics on radio 4 and here it is so clear. The Tory has a lime in his mouth and his voice ticks the boxes of practiced RP. His rhythms are establishment rhythms. His inflections are familiar but I’m bored of them. But then the opposing voice has the upflection we have come to associate with campaigners who have no grounds for their campaign. It’s a vocal habit that expects full agreement and judges dissent in advance. “The thing I’m saying is common sense to every decent person who thinks correctly.” I always want to shout “ARSEHOLES” at people employing that voice, even if I agree with the content.

Both people are snakes. I do not want either of them anywhere near policy. But yeah they are talking about the possibility of election. I don’t know who either of them are, but I reckon you’ve heard of both of their schools. One has identified as establishment, the other has identified as anti, and has been in opposition long enough to never have been an adult when the prize was being part of establishment. It’s just one huge shitpie Hydra. The talking head moves around, occasionally might even come from a different neck, but… it is always part of the same Hydra. Undefeated. The Greeks knew what they were talking about.

Putin is clever though. See how he has pointing to Ukraine despite the IS taking credit for the attack that maybe he funded. This is the post truth world. And he has long made it evident that the laws our current peacekeepers have made don’t apply to Russia. Cuz they aren’t him. This is a big old geopolitical shift even if it looks like grandpa Tsartsar wanting the old Soviet Union back before he dies.

The worst part is that there’s gonna be so much killing. I’m still making sure I know where my iodine is, in case the first nuke isn’t on top of me. Pragmatically, these warheads have a best before date. Putin is a practical man.

I have been doing shows for the young of London. Perhaps they’ll have a world. I hope so. My guy wrote a political piece. And one of the motifs in one of the songs sticks with me: “You’ve gotta have guts to do big things!”

Maybe there’s hope.

Once more up in the morning and over to Ruislip to let a dealer into my friend’s house. Her dad blew loads on art before he died. This old guy was one of the people he was buying from. Less of a cutthroat than many of the other people who’ve been going round, but he really only wanted to buy back the stuff he’d sold for a bit less than he had sold it for.

This again though really blows into my feelings about art as an “investment”. I don’t know where I inherited the notion that art was a good investment but it was unquestioned for decades. I’ve never personally seen anyone selling a work of art that they bought for more than they paid for it, even despite them owning it for decades and inflation. Things that cost £750 in the nineties are going for £120 now. I’m sure it must be because of all the interruption between artist and purchaser. The above theoretical nineties picture probably went to a dealer for fifty and then to a gallery for £250 and then from the gallery at £750 with £1200 on the price tag crossed out. The art is still appreciating, but as with music etc etc the creator isn’t the one profiting, it’s the people with money and space and the sheer balls to ask for all that dosh.

They are attractive paintings that are being sold. Someone will love them. But her dad was buying them to stack up, probably thinking he was making clever investments. He’d have to live forever. He was not the sharpest tool in the box.

I discharged my obligations and then spun home, power nap and then off up to Camden to be an accidental revolutionary chewing gum. One more day of that tomorrow and then nothing in the diary until Japan. I’m enjoying the focus. Always nice to work with clever actors like Milo, and genuinely refreshing to be the youngest of three practitioners when I’m pushing fifty.

I walked into Pret a Manger in Mornington Crescent preoccupied and a bit sad. I’d just heard about the attack on the Russian concert hall, and my mind was on the whole WW3 thing that has been emerging on so many fronts at the moment. Ukraine as the flagship for a combined destabilising of international trust in the peacekeeping of NATO. Gaza as an example of how our allies behave – but VETO to keep it burning. Taiwan coming up, the prize for. And then this attack on civilians in Russia just as we are forgetting they are human. It’ll slightly dial back Putin’s ebullience after his inevitable election win. Sudan is killing itself as well, and much of Africa is in the balance. Spring is often the time that ward escalate, and here we are. There’ll be a great deal happening in the next few months. Likely a concerted attack on many fronts in Ukraine and new recruits burnt on the altar of one man’s dislike of the idea of NATO. They’ve started to call it a war now, The Russians. It has certainly been an extended trail of persistence, motive and resources. It’s far enough away from us still that we can all get overexcited about the colour of a cross on a football shirt. But longer it goes on the closer it gets.

This is why you shouldn’t listen to the news when you’re tired. I walked into pret despairing for the world, and the single member of staff behind the desk must have seen something in my demeanor. I got my soup and my sandwich for free, such a bright gesture over such dark thoughts. I love how Pret let’s their staff do that occasionally.

Showtime shortly thereafter and Milo and I once more enjoying the little revolutionary tale we are telling. It’s a happy little group, the Scene and Heard lot. I needed the focus at the moment so I’m glad they asked me. I’m in the process of pulling my socks up. Lovely while I do it to be in the room with such a wide selection of good practitioners, all craft positive, all kind.

I’m home now and even though I didn’t stay for drinks after the show again it is still later than normal people go to sleep. Morning won’t be super early though, and it’s just a bit of driving tomorrow and another show. I’ll likely listen to music so the news doesn’t spin me out again, even though it got me a free dinner.

A few hours ago I was sitting in a room with a dead body. Now I’m dressed up as watermelon gum listening to the audience laughing at an old mate who got famous.

Life is… life.

My mum’s old boyfriend died after breakfast. I found out just before I went to work. I drove over to the where he was and brought daffodils. When I found mum someone had put a daff on her. I said my farewells and did the same for him.

A dead body really is just dead. I’ve only seen a few. That spark that makes us all the things we can be … once it is gone we are just husk. Almost unrecognisable as human. The body is really just a vessel for… something.

Here tonight everybody is flashing with that something. Men and women dressed as the weirdest things. Mad scenes, friendships, songs, politics. Breath and words and eyes and the things that pass between us all that we can’t see.

Where is he now, the charming rake I used to fight with as a teenager? Where’s the slow old fellow having a smoke on the bench outside Tesco? Where’s the man who made a charity and gave me my first job designing the annual report? Nothing of what he was could be felt as I sat with him. But I spoke to him anyway, as some of us do with the dead, feeling the prickle of what might remain of him in the air, in the shiftspaces beyond the easy reach.

I’ve got to go join the Killy Revolution now. I’ve got to team up with a bunch of keys and defuse a hamster bomb. One day I’ll be that husk, but not today.

All the worries and the wasted time. All the things we spend so long with. We are not here long enough to forget the spark that makes us what we are. Kindle that spark, let it burn bright while it burns. And if that involves looking like an idiot in front of loads of people in order to raise the self esteem of a young man from Somerstown, then do it and do it with pride. This is Walter Extra, the limited edition watermelon gum, signing off for the day.