Month: April 2024

So a varied day. It started with an estate agent. Nobody in their right mind likes estate agents and even with no skin in the game I could feel my distaste. I just let him in so he could disappoint my friend. Snake.

Then I took a load of photos of books. Really just an aide memoir. I was back at the house of my friend’s crap dead father. It’s one thing to see the chattels of someone you loved reduced to piles of like. It’s something else to see the accumulation of ego nursing bollocks that someone you have just cause to dislike has accumulated. I’m sifting for value. There’s little to find. And I have no kindness for this man’s memory.

Still, the geek in me likes looking for interesting things. There’s bits and bobs.

Then I drove down into North London and saw friends. I’m off soon and it is helpful to touch base with who we can when we are so damnably nomadic. I can’t keep social calendars very well with the old ADHD, so largely if you aren’t right there I might forget to call you. My best friends are the ones who get that and are similar. I saw two of them this afternoon.

Then home for a meaty meal with Tom, who is on the sofa. I bought nice kebabs from the Hampstead Butcher. I’m happy as I covered a lot of ground today. I’m gonna just turn over now towards electric blanket and a pint of water. Perhaps having a beer in Camden late afternoon was not conducive to good thinking now, at midnight when I can barely string a sentence together.

ALSO Spring? Maybe… Maybe… Although I’m worried the seasons are broken now with the oblivious selfish mess we continue to make of our atmosphere. “I don’t believe in climate change,” I’ve heard people say that as if that’s a protest thing to say. We’ve been properly brainwashed. The idiots think they’re clever. Cthulu will rise ftagn ftagn gnarr rlyehh cathrrass covfefe ftagn.

I’m off to bed.

I’ve been back at my friend’s weird dad’s, and around that I’ve been looking at the funeral for my mum’s ex boyfriend.

We rarely leave this ship of fools on our own terms. He put a fair amount in order. He didn’t leave a huge mess. But he lived nomadically, finding a partner with property and aligning to their needs. It’s a way of things, and he did it well. I was suspicious from the outset as it was clear he was on the take, but he was terribly charming and my mother seemed mostly happy until the end. His habits were deathwards habits though and I know for sure she would have lived longer if she hadn’t met him. Her direction went with his though. I’m amazed he lived so long considering his habits. Heavy smoking and drinking. Set up a charity, got it rolling and lived off it. A good charity. But where does the money actually go? Hopefully where we want it to.

I struggled massively with him in some ways, but in others we aligned. He gave me my first job, designing the annual reports for his charity. We won awards. He taught me to properly question authority. It’s not enough to know the FACEHOOMS are wrong, we have to relentlessly zero in on their lies and hypocrisies in minutiae. His mate David Monroe took my first headshots, and became my mate, taught me about Rioja and then died so suddenly. David was gonna film Keith’s life. There is a STORY there. If nobody else tells it I’ll tell it here, because mum loved him even if I blame him for the way she went. She made her own decisions.

There was a window that he blew. “I need someone to write my life.” “Ok, mate. I’m busy until June but then we can spend as much time as you need.” “What do you mean?” “To write your life. I’ll need to spend some time with you and get things in order. And even though we have always had this complicated relationship, I’m happy to do it because you’ve made some positive change in the world.” “What… you? No. What are you talking about. You’re not a writer.” “Oh I’m sorry, I thought you were obliquely asking me… I’m… I mean I’m not a known writer, no. But I … I write a blog. I assumed you must have come across it and that was why you were saying you needed a writer to be a biographer.” “A BLOG? GOOD GOD NO. I’m not looking for a blogger. What? No. God no. Why would you think that? Christ. No. I need an actual writer who can write.” Sometimes, my darlings, we are the architects of our own oblivion.

I might do it anyway. I don’t really want to though tbh. There are plenty of people who look like him and feel their story must be told. Back then I thought he was asking me to, and I knew I would try to honour what he thought he was while also taking into account his impact. I thought writing him would be a departure, a challenge, something I didn’t really want to do but within which I was actually positioned to express better anyone else. I didn’t have time though. Life. I juggled it all in my head. “If I start coming to you in two weeks, I can give two weeks, on and off, to me gathering information to get it straight.” I did the maths and made the offer knowing I would be sacrificing dayjobs. His response? He blocked it all immediately, with such hard contempt that it has been tricky since then to be positive towards the old fucker.

He traded off charm for decades, and he was charming. It’s how he found his housing. I’m helping with his funeral now. He lived in this flat a fair few years after mum died cos Max and I let him. I don’t want his legacy to be my experience of him. I resented him for taking mum for what he could and dangling this “maybe” thing. She died sad because she bought his fantasy of a place in the country one day. He was always about to be able to get it. It never happened.

So… I’ve been trying to edit Blake for his funeral. He cared about mischief. But the funeral is trying to be vanilla. And I think it is right to try and carry the man I knew into it, not just obedience. He was a contrarian through and through, and taught me that much as dated mum. But the Blake is being cut to shreds and I’m wondering what is left of – let’s be honest for once – the con man my mother fell for. Feck it, I’m going there, he was a confidence trickster. Good looking, debonair, had a proveable backstory. A bad thing had happened to him. He traded off it until he died. He was a an absolute flashy liar. Me and all my friends knew it and laughed about it. He tried to make out like he knew the managers of every band we ever liked. We made up bands with certainty. We used random bands we met at raves with no managers. “Oh ya, Pascal’s Bongo Massive, I know their manager.” In my friendship group, a “Keith” became synonymous with someone who lied in order to fit in.

It’s complicated. I loved him. He was utterly full of shit. I sat with his body and apologised. Just because I blamed him for my mum’s death doesn’t mean he necessarily caused it. He just contributed. And all those things aside, I can still honour his life, and leave the lies behind. I just don’t trust he ever meant to get that fabled place in the country.

Fare forward, you delightful lying old maniac. I’ll try and represent at your funeral. The only thing I can’t properly represent is your relationship with the truth.

Divorce is a complicated thing when you’ve got kids. My parents loved each other, for certain. Mum wanted a divorce though. She had an idea about a glamorous London student life that she had never had. She tried for it, realised she was mostly still just as unhappy, went back and was wonderful with dad as he was dying, cos she loved him, and then carefully and totally took herself out of the world.

I was 12 at divorce time, just confirmed to go to Harrow when “Boys, come to the morning room,” was called out. That warm room where I set the fire every morning. “Mummy and daddy still love each other but…” etc etc. It’s a shock to the system. We construct these peaceful narratives where everything is perfect, as children. It’s the happy way to live. Nobody wants to have to see the edges of everything positive. Isn’t it lovely to just assume that everything is safe and happy? Oh children, it isn’t.

In retrospect, I am happy for the timing of that small event that I refer to as “the first crack”. It started the process that rounded me out. I couldn’t eat so much shit thereafter. I distrusted everything. At the time that divorce trustbreak was the only big thing I had had in my safe safe life. It helped me be the person who didn’t fit in, and consequently the person I am now, half jaguar, living between the fire and the woods, aware that the fire is built of the ruins of the woods, that the woods are older and deeper and stranger than we can know. And yeah my parents both went before I was thirty and I lost my shit but now there’s perspective. The biggest thing we’ve had is the biggest thing we’ve had until we get something bigger. There are people my age for whom the greatest hardship is still just a lost teddy bear. Some of them are high up in the Tory party. They still miss that teddy. We only know what we know.

Anyway I met with the man I still kinda wish mum had stayed with post divorce. A kind man, 73 now so … guarded as kind people have to become over time in a world where too many people are on the take. His habits were life positive. Mum was life positive when with him. I still like him. He sent back his steak and had the lamb and didn’t like it, so he’s particular. But I can take fussy, if it comes with a generous outlook. I paid for everything stealthily so he couldn’t try. I catalysed the meeting. He’s a nice man and has been a doctor all his life so he’s probably used to people expecting him to pay.

Mum liked glamour though. He wasn’t glamorous. Arse. I’m good at that shit if I absolutely have to be, but I detest the bullshit of it. He even googled me pre meeting and told me I should improve my online profile. He wanted me to buy into the glam world for my own good because he’s kind. I just see that world and see children pretending. It’s a shared hallucination, the notion of being glamorous. You just shout your name at people and try and dress like people who are dead. If you identify towards it you are being sucked into a black hole, because the actual poster children of the idea of glamour didn’t give a fuck about glamour and that’s why the deadliving ideate towards them. They were living their life and dealing with their mental health and generating art that was an expression and an outlet. They largely died badly at 27ish after generating a burning amount of something. By pretending towards it though you are merely courting oblivion.

You’ve got no business trying to imitate someone who died unhappily before you were born just because … shopowners want you to buy their clothes?

But I was happy to see mum’s ex. He’s well. He beat some cancer. He walks with a slopelurch, but I’m pronated on my right and it isn’t a limp. He’s pretty damn healthy and perky for 73. If I make that age it’ll be a time for celebration. Hopefully I’ll see more of him.

My downstairs neighbour is concerned, as she thinks there’s a mouse. When she is concerned the fallout can spill over. I was once overflowing water past her window, and I knew it was happening but it wasn’t much. I had a plumber booked but had to go out before. It was only for half a day as I had to go do some filming and thought it wouldn’t be necessary to switch the stop cock off. The wind was blowing it into her window and it wasn’t raining to mask it. I had 14 phone calls over about an hour. Her , the caretaker, the management of the block… She went big panic on it.

So I’m making sure I’m showing concern about the mouse in case she assumes it has come down from my flat. It hasn’t come down from mine, but I need to pantomime how much I care about mice so she doesn’t start telling people it has.

Mice don’t last long up here. Either there’s the smell of a snake, there’s a cat, or, worst for them, there’s me. I’m the one who knocks.

I remember twenty years ago when I was squeamish about killing mice. Then I got home after Sprite one year to Nathan in his pants in front of the telly casually saying “Oh and there’s mice.” “For how long?” “Couple of months.” The mice had bred down so many generations while he was in his pants that there were tiny tiny adult mice who were so small they didn’t trigger the traps or were within the trap when they went off so weren’t hit. I had to grow teeth about it. It’ll be one of the things that comes up at The Pearly Gates. I still can’t quite categorise mice like I do clothes moths. But… the mouse apocalypse that I wrought involved a number of horrors for me as well as much worse for the creatures.

Poisoned mice dying unnoticed under soft things I loved. Poisoned mice openly and horribly performative dying on the living room carpet just as I got home from work with friends. Poisoned mice generally doing what they do, which sometimes is to go and let the big scary human creature see there’s a creature in pain just in case something can be done. Then the mutilation… Mice badly caught in traps running round still attached to the wood  as they die of shock. Me trying to kill them more quickly for mercy but how? Lining up another trap with their head, pulling open the spring, aiming… I even had to use evil glue traps at the end for the tiny ones as they were immune to the poison and wouldn’t get the snaptraps. Glue is foul as then what do you do with the creature that is very aware that you are there and is hurting itself trying to escape from you? I dropped a huge chunk of masonry on one from some local roadworks and it screamed at me as I did it. It knew exactly what was going on. I left it attached to the underside of a paving stone. Likely it was laid down the next morning and someone swore at me. “What the fuck is this, a dead mouse stuck with a glue trap? Oh you nasty bastard. And now we have to lay this stone… Harrie, can you get this one, I feel a bit sick?”

So … I don’t want mice up here again as I am looking towards my Buddhism which is stronger now than it was then. I know I’ll utterly destroy them if they come. I don’t want to have to. Humane traps? Maybe now there’s the solution. Back then I couldn’t pay the extra. Plus most of the ones I’ve seen (and yes tried) don’t work.

This evening we had huge spring asparagus and tatties as I’ve been feeling bad about all the meat I’ve had lately. I don’t like the prospect of having to be death to loads of small mammals… It’ll never escalate again like it did, because literally what the fuck, Nathan? But we were kids. One or two I can deal with. I think I once wrote about the one I caught by the tail with my own hands. Hadn’t thought it through. Had to carry it down three flights of stairs as it expelled everything and tried to bite me / it’s own tail off. I took it across the zebra crossing, in mild shock, noticing the people in the cars clock what I was carrying. I threw it into the river, which just happened to be full flood. My imagination had told me the tide would be out and I’d be making a happy little river mouse. But no. And I still threw it in. And I watched it drown. And it takes longer than you think. And that’s on my karmic record.

insha’Allah.

Nam myo ho renge kyo

Amen

Oops

Peter has one of those BMW C1 motorbikes with a roll cage on top. Just 125cc and they are top heavy. As far as I recall they first showed up in the nineties with some talk about safety, but people quickly established that they bring as many problems as they solve. Top-heaviness was the problem today.

Peter does something complicated with cashback. He’s about my age and with the air of someone having a pleasant life shift. Girlfriend and a motorbike. Kids exist but I have a feeling there’s been a divorce. He’s tall and friendly and intelligent and his eyes sparkle. Brian and I met him this afternoon for the first time.

We were shopping. Paul had been shopping too. We were in the car park. So was Paul. It took me a moment to work out what I was looking at though as he was in right mess.

It’s genuinely astonishing how much a leg can bend before the bone snaps. He was in pain. Lots of pain. But somehow … somehow it wasn’t broken. His top heavy bike had lost the back in an oil slick in the car park while he was walking it out of the bike parking area. It had fallen on his leg and he was totally trapped by it. Two people who were physically perfectly capable of lifting the thing had instead been panicking and running round in circles. When Brian and I appeared they appealed to us immediately. “You need to help him.” *cos we won’t*

Slowly and carefully, taking direction from Peter in case he was attached it it or impaled etc, Brian and I righted the bike and got it off him. It had been leaking petrol everywhere so we stood it a bit away from Peter. Peter was adrenalised by shock and trying to be Superman while repeatedly dropping his helmet. A staff member showed up and brought him a chair. He kept bouncing out of it and immediately flinching.

It’s only 125cc that bike. Brian and I are both allowed to drive it. Brian made the offer to get the thing home if it ran. You have to strap in with two seatbelts. We duly trussed our lad into the cockpit before checking where the fire extinguisher was because, you know, it could have blown up when we turned the key. A worrying thought. Especially as the only extinguisher I could clock quickly was water.

It didn’t blow up, which was a relief to me and more to Brian, double strapped into the thing as he was. I took Peter into Bergman and we went slowly to Peter’s home through traffic in convoy.

Peter was talking the hind legs off a donkey next to me and likely he’ll wake up tomorrow in massive pain and on an adrenaline comedown. Shock is a big old kick. Brian did brilliantly considering he’s jetlagged to all hell. I was watching him pilot the thing in the rearview mirror and he looked pretty angry most of the way. God knows what time his body thinks it is.

Peter rang his girlfriend who suggested that he give us a bottle of bubbles so when we got him back he vanished into the house and comically emerged, staggering on his miraculously preserved leg and clutching a chilled bottle of Fortnums champagne. “Stop. Sit down. Put your leg up.” Brian and I said it simultaneously. “And thanks.”

I like Peter. I want him to get that leg looked at though, bless him. It might not be broken but ligament damage takes so long to stop hurting and Peter would do well to have someone tell him he’s not fifteen anymore. Although it’s charming. I hope he recovers well. Sounds like the work he does doesn’t involve running around lots so it’s not gonna be disastrous like it can be for those of us who jump on things for a living. It helped Brian forget his jetlag. “What’s it like to drive?” I ask Brian. “Depressingly slow.” But the things Brian likes to drive go at light speed.

A little bit of good Samaritan. Keeps the energy moving nicely. Brian stinks of petrol. “That’s the blog sorted,” he says, and I nod.

Last night I went to sleep thinking I had crafted a masterpiece. Drop the mic, I thought.

“How are you feeling after last night?” Lou asked. “It was a gorgeous evening.” “I haven’t a clue what happened from reading you.”

I had gone to sleep thinking “yeah! I’ve crafted something. Referred back to the start at the end??! Witchcraft!”

Lou: “Yes it had a shape to it. There was a beginning, a muddle and an end.”

…

God I love Lou.

Someone has to call that crap. I re-read it, which I rarely if ever do. “what a load of nonsense,” I told her. “funny nonsense” she responded. Thank God. There’s someone out there who lets me be an idiot. Everyone gets lucky sometimes. She’s the best.

She’s had Delhi-Belly today, but was expecting it. Mostly she’s in Goa eating plants and covered in oil. I don’t think I could manage what she’s doing, genuinely. I think I’d be utterly fed up. I’m very very proud of her. She’s trying to learn extremely involved things. She’s doing it faster than anyone should ever be expected to. She’s gonna get back to the UK totally flooded with knowledge and very good at Ayurvedic massage. I’m hoping to dig out a massage table so she can at least cover her friends with oil and try and remember portions of things on her return. I’m sure I’ll need something when I get back from Japan. But the massage she observed today has over 50 movements. Nobody can take that in in a day even if they aren’t having to fire a backwards watergun through the eye of a needle at a moment’s notice on top of learning.

Lovely day today. Old friends and meetings, emails I should have sent long ago. There’s a lot to be said for having more downtime than I’m used to. The admin mountain, chipped away. I even sent an email today to Drain Detectives cos I was genuinely shocked at the lack of aftercare I got on a small job that got huge. You’ll have likely heard about the saga if you were tuning in here at Christmas. They ate a week’s wages, left it broken, and then eventually charged me for them to fix it badly. I’ve finally expressed my concerns and I’m very interested to see what they reveal themselves to be in the interaction to follow.  My hopes are not high but everyone can surprise from time to time.

And so to bed. It was my neighbour’s 69th birthday. I found out at about 7pm but happened to have a huge butcher’s RibEye and she’s French so I invited her up for late birthday dinner. We had rare steak with wine, asparagus and spinach and roast potatoes. I made my pepper sauce and cemented my reputation as a saucier. It got the French seal of approval, and that’s not easy. But it is always a monstrously fine pepper sauce. Recipe? Shallot. Various pepper, whatever stock, um, oh there’s some open wine from the other night, yeah get in the mortar weird spice mush yeah that’ll ohhhh yeah and that sweet whisky, that’ll be enough no it won’t and soy do you think that’ll go? yeah fuck it maybe, oh and cream damn there’s no cream can I butter? Tastes too umami. no no go to the shop.. hi shop, you’ve got THINGS. They go in too. Cream. Time. SAUCE!! Yep that blows my face off. Oh and I’ve still got these red peppercorns. Hmm… Pours them in. Half an hour boiling. Top up with old red wine.

Nom. Seriously. I love pepper sauce as it is about condensing. You don’t need much, but every bit of it needs to make you go “ak”. Which is the noise I made when i realised DD wanted over £300 to fix the loo they’d broken. And that’s before they fixed it worse than it was before it was bust.

“I think I should be clear at this point that I’m not going to let you put it in my bottom.”

The look of annoyed resignation led both to me feeling a little bit sexy and simultaneously a bit too perceptive. We were having a great conversation. So yes I called the interaction before I found out why it was so great. It seems I’m a bear right now. Big overcoat, big fluffy beard. Rupert Bear had Adventures in Barnes. Fair enough. I’ve been sorting through incredible amounts of nasty old crap energy today left behind by an old friend’s dad. Nice to see that I’m still a prospect within that.

I met a therapist. Not the guy who made the show, FYI, don’t go jumping down the wrong alley etc etc fnarr fnarr.

I hadn’t had time to dump the badness as I usually do after clearing bollocks for people, so I was using booze post show. I still had fingers filthy from sorting through old books. Had to go wash hands thoroughly in the pub post show, midway through the interaction. Booze never clears anything, it just kicks things down the line. We all know that. But we all do stupid things from time to time.

I’ll do some proper work now I’m home but I’m giving this to you live, kids. I’m writing the evening before clearing the evening. (This sentence is the final one post edit before I go and do that aaaaaaaaaaahhhh here we go … … *he actually went back over it?! unprecedented … …

“You say you pull shit out of people? How do you process that shit once you’ve pulled it?” (My language not his. He wasn’t sweary. He’s got the jargon. He does this for a living. THERAPY KNOWINGZ.) We are talking about energy. Whatever that means to you it’s probably right.

“Ritual.” I tell him – truthfully – that I improvise some random bollocks that satisfies me and the other people involved if need be. Every time. Cuz I do. I’m stealing from so many pantheons in my rituals. There’s my interpretations of ancient Neolithic stuff, attempts at Celtic, solid Greek pantheistic with the obvious dead Roman copies, an attempt at understanding our native spirit culture, Japanese animism that I’m gonna know so much better very soon, cheap Buddhism, Christian red in tooth and claw with all the schisms and mutterings … so many more, bring ’em motherfuckers, I’ll eat all your beliefthings. Nom. I will continue to do so. BURN INCENSE BURN. The only religion I deny is Dawkins. What delusion to specifically be sure there’s nothing.

He’s a professed Christian, coming onto me in the pub. “WHAT LOVE WHAT LOVE WHAT LOVE WHAT LOVE WHAT LOVE WHAT LOVE” to quote Moby. There’s enough I can touch from his pantheon (or should I call it a monotheon aha aha fnff fnuff blrrrgh?) But yeah avoiding the categorisation bullshit, there’s enough I can touch from the things he is Christianically comfortable with to help him make sense of the random energy-moving shit I do in terms of Holy Spirit or Prayer or what have you. Gnosticism. Blah.

Normally I never tell people I move energy around as I’m probably moving yours stealthily and it’s a shit conversation anyway. “What the fuck are you talking about?”. It’s a stealthy and so far largely unpaid cottage industry. Shhh. But Jethro was with me this evening. Can’t hide from the skinner. Who knows what he’s said to whom? I can’t let that boy down. We are each other. He’s the man who flayed back all the layers of protection in the woods when I was burning burning burning.

The reason I was up in Barnes this evening was to watch another one skinned by the skinner, doing a one man show. He even brings Jethro into it, with a very well judged impression.

This one… Tom … he’s made a clown show about the loss involved when your parents pay for an institution to bring you up so they can keep shagging. It’s full of cock. It’s full of rage. It’s full of joy. It’s looking at the culture that makes Rishi and co seem like aliens to anyone half present in the world. He’s not pulling punches. He’s not throwing them either. He’s letting all of us see his hot mess and hoping we appreciate and love him and hate the mess of abandonment. I did. 

Not because he’s blessed in the Saltburn “Murder on the Dance Floor” way, but that’s part of it all. Let it all hang out baby. He knows his blessing as he knows his curse. In response to the quote at the top of this blog? He would have made a counter offer.

I’m happy to be home. Night night darlings.

Here’s a link to the show. It’s in Barnes. Then it’ll be Edinburgh. Then THE WORLD. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa. Go see it. Or don’t. You can choose.

I’m really not the guy from Radio Shack. I was round Sarah’s again this evening trying to get this telly up and running. It took me about an hour before I worked out where the “on” button was. Now I’ve got the thing refusing to bring up any menus and instead saying “No Teletext” no matter which button I push and I hated it so much I told her I was gonna rain-check. I’m glad I didn’t flog the damn thing on eBay as it’s fucked.

Now I’m home. It’s 11pm. It’s raining and my sash window is bleeding cold air in behind me. In the street below someone has decided now is the correct time for a pneumatic drill. He’s holding down the button longer than people normally do. Guddaguddagudda and I want to go downstairs in a dressing gown and say “Do you have any idea what time this is?” but my hair isn’t grey enough and I’ve got a chin. So I’m just waiting and watching as slow vans full of traffic cones roll through the horrid evening. I suspect it’s gonna be a bad one tonight. A London night. Roadworks and shouting. At least they might stop the traffic.

Meantime my WhatsApp has started buzzing off the chain trying to help organise the funeral for my mum’s boyfriend. He’s the guy whose body I went and sat with the other day. A powerful force for good in the world, a complicated presence in my life. He was very much himself at all times. An authentic voice. I want to try and help his funeral be something that reflected his remarkable life. He was put in charge of mum’s funeral and we were all so traumatised it was a total mess, and contributed to alienating me from mum’s friends. I never really knew what happened to them. It’s sad. But here is his life, and his very real achievements, and a chance to put aside all the “you’re not my dad” stuff. He was still a maverick, the same sort of age as pa, but with a less catastrophic set of lifestyle choices. He made old bones, with the inevitable crumbling at the end that comes with such longevity. The last few years he wasn’t really sure who anyone was, and I found it hard enough to be with him that I likely could be accused of neglecting my duties.

So. Lives. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi and all that. The drilling has stopped. The cold persists. Lou is whacked out from heat in Goa and I’m so so envious. Just one day of being so hot I can’t think. That’s all I ask…

There’s been a popular meme today shared and rehashed by innumerable people. The wording changes but the idea remains the same. Essentially : April Fool’s Day – The only day of the year that people engage critical thinking when encountering information online.

Dog Opera. A Victorian Barge for politicians to escape the blitz. A pterodactyl photo from a bird watching hide. Apparently ITV’s This Morning rehashed an old Antiques Roadshow April Fool from the 1980’s. Attribute huge value to an object and then smash it on telly to freak out a presenter. Apparently on April 1 1992 they put signs in LAX welcoming passengers to Chicago. There was a famous spaghetti harvest reported on 1960’s BBC news. As a kid I remember all sorts of silly things in the papers and on telly. Now it’s a little harder to parse as so many people have lost the ability to understand the passage of time and how science works. Just yesterday my nephew tried the old “It’s a theory of evolution” thing and I had to try and explain what “theory” means in scientific terms. Literate human beings with functioning minds have forgotten the time and input that have led to many things that many of us now take for granted. They see us take it for granted and they think they are being clever by announcing that the things we take for granted are wrong. Flat Earth, Creationism, Nephilim etc etc. In fact, one of the April Fools I saw this morning was about Nephilim. And an old friend of mine thinks they built the pyramids. He hasn’t ever been involved in a huge group project so can’t believe what numbers and ingenuity can achieve.

Of course it is moronic to just absorb what you’re told. But it’s even more moronic to tell people they’re dumb for taking for granted that the world is round or that there’s Nothing out there or that God has a specific name and list of intentions. It’s the “sheeple” type language used in all this conversation that makes me want to hadouken all the exponents of alternative narratives. It’s always wet with smugjuice and usually from brilliant right brains who have been made to feel dumb by the left brain dominance of the territory that has been called “clever”.

Within this horrible made up world of cabals and satanists and maneating liberals there’s never any particular mission or thing we can do to help. It’s more about the person telling you knowing it than it is about a call to action. The purpose of it appears to be about being seen as knowing a thing. Back to the playground. “I know something you don’t know!”

Any of these April Fools jokes could be substituted for whatever gumf your old mate is banging on about. Like my old mate and the nephilim.

But the meme has a point. We all keep absorbing things like sponges. Which news outlets are not carrying bias? The only way to work out what’s going on in the world is to get out into it, and to get out of your bubble, but there’s a lot of ground to cover and it can be exhausting.

I’ve done neither today and I’m fine with that. I got Bone Daddy to send me a Tantanmen 2 and I wolfed it down while watching the world go by past my window. Tomorrow I’ll go back into it. Today I had a bank holiday.

Ahh my dear brother and his progeny. I’m afraid I’ve given them ammunition. Not with intention. But I so rarely have time with them that it is hard to judge which subjects are discussed and which aren’t. We had a great time regardless. Didn’t eat a lamb. Catherine went to a farm and now she won’t eat lamb so we had battery chickens who had lived in a box from cradle to grave with their feet dissolving instead. They’re fine as she didn’t feed them by hand once.

He’s got a rabbit. Appropriate for the season.

Nicholas is in his twenties right now, and streams himself playing Dead by Daylight named for a David Gemmel character who was in his seventies. Druss the Legend, the aged axeman who had to coordinate the defences for one last major battle. I left a book lying around and it clearly had an effect on Nick. It’s a very good version of the “one last job” trope in a fantasy setting. It’s weird seeing an ingenue like Nick associate with the character but then I found the Gemmel book when I was roughly his age. Legend. It’s a great piece of heroic fantasy, and Druss is a memorable hero who holds the line. It’s Thermopylae in fantasyland, with an old axeman at the front. But you aren’t gonna make a living by streaming unless you are shithot at editing and extremely charismatic and well connected online. He’s none of the three, but could prove us all wrong just as I eventually proved my parent-driven critics wrong but at what cost at what cost?

Now I’m home with an absurd sausage dog who is pining for his keepers. They’ve all gone to a concert. I didn’t expect to get left with it but I have.

He’s cute. We are just establishing how to be friends. He’s still pining, but he’s getting used to the fact it is just the two of us now. Before long he’ll be chilling out with me. But I figured I’d write this while he was establishing that they definitely aren’t here anymore. Timed it pretty well. He’s just started trying to clamber on me. I think the two of us will be in dialogue for the rest of the evening.

He’s come to sit on me now. But he’ll be off before long to bark at random things that might be his keepers.