When I was a kid I was the subject of a school assembly. I’d totally wanged someone in the neck in the school playground and hurt them quite badly. The next day the headmaster had walked up and down the stage lecturing us on the dangers of VIOLENCE, and how TERRIBLE a thing it is.
It was terrifying.
As he strode up and down, up and down I could hear the creak of his leather shoes and see his fingers interlaced behind his back. He had hairy fingers, black wiry curls down to the knuckle. Up and down. He will NOT TOLERATE VIOLENCE IN HIS SCHOOL. Up and down.
I was sweating. It is a sin TO DELIBERATELY AND INTENTIONALLY HURT ANOTHER PERSON. The tiny me, bewildered and horribly guilt stricken thought that the police were about to smash into the room and pull me out by the hair, or set an Alsatian on me while stamping on my head.
When the assembly finished and it became clear that I was not going to be imprisoned in a windowless cell underground I breathed out a sigh of relief so huge that I lifted the hair of every single person in Cornwall. I had been sweating so much I could literally glide across the polished floors like a greased eel. Never was I so happy to leave a room, not even when I had a job interview at a prestigious educational establishment and my dress fell open and even though I had a rad bra on and pretty good tits the panel were still unimpressed.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. I was meant to be telling you about this awesome shit which I’ve got recently. But I’ll let my old headmaster do it.
I WILL NOT TOLERATE PUPILS NOT WEARING AWESOME KNEE HIGH ELECTRIC BLUE SOCKS.
Oxfam, 99peniccles.
DO NOT NEGLECT YOUR READING, IT IS THE FOUNDATION OF LEARNING.
Cool book for free from the Lewes Squat Shop (now closed by the fuzz.)
YOU KNOW THE RULES. AN OLD WOODEN BOX USED FOR A BOOKSHELF IS FORBIDDEN, LIKE MASTURBATION AND CONKERS.
Old wooden box used as bedside table, £1 Cancer Research.
MISS PEARCE. THIS IS THE WORST EXAMPLE OF A DRESSING TABLE I HAVE EVER SEEN. DETENTION.
But sir, it only cost £8 from Furniture Now!
THAT SHIRT IS NOT, REPEAT NOT REGULATION SCHOOL UNIFORM.
Marvellous Handmade shirt from old tablecloth FREE from Squat Shop again (scuppered by the Rozzers, yeah?.
YOU KNOW THE RULES. JIGSAW PUZZLES MOST FEATURE AT LEAST ONE IMAGE OF A SCREAMING CHILD.
Jigsaw featuring emotional infant 99pentigrams, Oxfam.
Hopes are fading fast of not finding me in my nineties wearing a top hat, worshipping a spoon and living buried amongst the sort of junk I’ve started picking up and furnishing my home with. I’ll be found, stiff with rigor mortis beneath a pile of cutesy Wedgewood plates I picked up for thirty pence and an assortment of rustic pottery bobbins which are so crudely hewn and mis-shapen they appear to have been created by wolves. Near sighted, dumb wolves.
Don’t believe me? More fool you then as I show you these pictures taken from my Nü Haüs.
Lookie-wookie-do at this tea tin (25pencicles) and this awesome stovetop espresso machine which I found in a warehouse sale and is the rich, hunky genuinely Italian uncle to my nice but dim Ikea one. It cost a mere poundlington.
See! Here! At this bunting I fucking well made. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LIVE ALONE. YOU MAKE BUNTING.
Also you plant flowers in ditzy vintage tea-cups like feminism never happened and you never do unlady-ish things like fart, burp or smell.
I lived by the sea for a bit and I found some shells and some stones what had holes in then I did a thing with them on a string with them then I hung it on my shed door where it looks nice can I have a cup of tea now nurse?
(note the Dali-esque upside down lock.)
My mantelpiece is fucking brilliant.
This one is a mantelpiece close up.
Both these white bad-asses came from a junk box outside a charity shop for twenty five pence each. Are you sure you stretch to that? I asked myself sarcastically when I bought them. Shut-up brain, I replied to myself and then I hurt my own feelings 
Bowls. The sum total of these three bowls is under a pound and I keep things in them. THEY ARE HANDY, ALRIGHT? BOWLS.
Ah Jesus, this plate. I love this plate like I love my own daughter. More, possibly. It was thirty pence and is worth about thirty pounds. I love cracked glaze, I love the trim, the birds, the mandela in the centre. Stop looking at it, you’ve looked enough. Avert your eyes, heathen.
I made these cushions from some old tablecloth fabric which cost me £2.50. In doing so I have created two cushions which are guaranteed to never, ever blend into any room as long as rooms exist, even if that room is in YOUR MIND.
This chamber pot is the shizzlington isn’t it? Two pounds, which I haggled down from three. I haggled it like a boss.
My wood burner. Birches be hatin’ on me. Don’t be like that, oak-ay? I’ve been pine-ing for one for ages. I’m sorry.
My awesome bookcase. Look at that big ol’ hunk of wood at the bottom. Found it on a beach. And yes, that is a framed photo of MYSELF in the top right corner.
I made some small talk earlier. You know, small talk. Something about the weather, and then something about some plants. I don’t fucking remember, I was terrible at it. If approached in a public space by some well meaning stranger just looking for a simple chat to pass the time or to muse on the latest bus timetable I clam up. I sweat. I grimace as though I am passing a particularly painful kidney stone through an inflamed urethra. I yip, cringe and generally buffoon myself into a new dimension. It’s little wonder therefore that now I’m forced to do it often I spend a majority of my days glowering at the world defensively.
I’m so bad at it but so keen to make a decent impression that I often wonder what the hell people are thinking of me. I usually do this while I’m talking, thereby derailing whatever I was saying so that I just….trail….off…..slowly. As another conversational turd floats by.
Could THIS be the reason I never had sex with Keanu Reeves? (bottom of page)
Here’s an example. This is an ACTUAL conversation which ACTUALLY HAPPENED sometime today. These words below are the ACTUAL ones spoken by me with my big flapping mouth and my social skills which could fit on the head of a pin.
Person; “Isn’t it a lovely day?”
Me; “Yes haha, good to see the sun again. Was beginning to think it was a nuclear winter. Is that a thing, a nuclear winter? Or does a bomb have to be dropped first?”
Person; “I’m not sure -”
Me; “I suppose if a bomb did have to be dropped first a ‘nuclear winter’ would be one in which we’re all mutants and victims of radiation, wouldn’t it?”
Person; “Uhhhh-”
Me: “Would make Christmas a bit depressing wouldn’t it, haha. Still, we’ll probably all end up moaning about the sun in a week or so won’t we? Aren’t humans funny? OUR ATTITUDE STINKS. And a book of stamps, please.”
I can’t do smalltalk. Similarly, I can’t do ‘Play it Cool’ either. You know what ‘Play it Cool’ is, right? For instance;
“Look over there Daisy, it’s hot early nineties hunk Keanu Reeves. He’s been checking you out for ages fly girl so I’m going to go to the bar and give him the opportunity to cruise over here.
Play it Cool, alright?”
I immediately start breaking out some freaky body popping, or breakdance my way into the future, or talk about bumsex or try out a new yodel. Awful.
NO WONDER I NEVER HAD SEX WITH KEANU REEVES IN THE NINETIES.
I have a friend who writes haikus. The ancient Japanese form of poetry which is as fragile and intricate as a snowflake, it scrapes away the flab of language to reveal the bare bones beneath.
I, like most luckless proles with butterfingers for the English language, have just smashed away at my keyboard with my lumpen, mis-shapen fists and smashed out these bastards which I hope you will enjoy reading. I hope you enjoy them with your eyes as much as I liked composing them with my brain and fingers.
haikus for Jason Statham.
Puppy eyes, bald patch
You were brilliant in Snatch
My wipe-clean tough guy.
Expendables.
You should narrow the cast list.
Bruce Willis too much.
Crank. Was it a film
Or a migraine, such was my
pain upon watching.
I !! LOVE YOU JA SON StaSTHAM.!
One of the joys (for me at least) of living alone is the mind-bending outfits I’m currently rocking in the evenings.
That and having a widdle with the door open.
And strutting about in my birthday suit singing ‘Me and My Bobby McGee’ with a small paper hat on my head and red lipstick.
But mainly it’s the outfit. Right now I’m dressing for comfort and warmth, a combination which makes me look as though I’m on an ethnic journey through a psychedelic minefield. Colour? I got your colours right here baby, big bright blocks of the shit like an explosion in a Timmy Mallet factory. Camper than a Gay Pride parade in Pat Sharp’s Funhouse. You want Ethnic prints? I look like the Khao San Road at sundown. I look as though I invented Yoga.
You get the picture. I am currently very colourful, very cosy, baggy and shapeless like an amoeba. Sexy I am not. Wearing what I’m wearing right now I couldn’t get laid if I had a solid gold vagina and a pearl for a clitoris.
If, like me, you remember the eighties then you may be able to reach into your age-clouded, wizened old walnut of a brain and pull out the dim memory of the Playtex Cross Your Heart bra adverts.
In it, a smiling woman in a bra which covers roughly 89% of her upper body traces a cross symbol over her chest area with her fingers, in order to demonstrate the Cross Your Heart bras cross-your-heartedness. That’s one way of looking at it. Another way is to imagine that she is showing you exactly where on your body she is going to stab you with a fucking meathook. That’s another, more sinister way.
I suppose it depends on the angle at which you’re looking at it from. Or the mood you’re in. Or how many drugs you’ve taken. Here’s a clue. If the Playtex Cross Your Heart Bra lady is turning to the camera and mouthing ‘You’re Next’ while performing her sinister physical catchphrase then YOU’VE TAKEN TOO MANY DRUGS. Put down the pipe, man. Honest to God.
I’m known for my lack of perspective. Famous for it in fact. I released an album. ‘100 Ways to Freak Out and Lose Control’ from which the hit single ‘I Can’t Handle This Funky Shit’ came. It was huge in the States. Massive. Disco killed it, but then again y’know, Disco killed everything.
Yes. That’s right. I’m still mad at Disco.
Talking of being brutally hoisted by perspective my stepfather died recently. It was heart-breakingly sad, the way only losing someone close to you can be, and with it came a grief that is indelible. Like wearing a black hood of thick felt, it muffles the real world and makes you feel dislocated and insubstantial. The grief coats everything and everyone who loves him like tar.
But also - but also - with it came a sense of perspective I hadn’t experienced before. Like someone clapping their hands around your chops and lifting your face to theirs, bellowing into it with all the might of their lungs,
“PAY ATTENTION!!! LIFE IS VERY, VERY FUCKING SHORT!”
I simplify this, obviously. Not for you, but for me. Life is short, and like Neil Young said, “once you’re gone you can’t come back.”
Don’t squander this life. Don’t let it escape you. It is very real and very here and very now. Please use it. Please don’t waste it, it is very, very precious.
I’m sorry. I bet you were hoping for something with more jokes and less maudlin hectoring. Let me end with something amazing.
On the day of the funeral the coffin was carried from the cathedral by members of Iron Maiden while ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ by the Who played. I know. This totally raises the bar for funerals, right? When I die I just better hope to be cremated by Slayer while Spinal Tap’s ‘Heavy Duty Rock N’ Roll’ plays me out or I fear I will be letting all of you down.
Darlings, it’s been too long. Like air kisses, sex and the TV programme Knightmare, I miss you.
I’ve had an absolute SHITFUCK NIGHTMARE of a year. I asked 2013 to do one thing for me – one fricking thing – and it failed spectacularly, and with about as much grace as an all out gangbang in a pool of custard.
“Just don’t be shit,” I asked the New Year as nicely as I could, “that’s all you have to do.”
“Sure, sure,” muttered 2013 looking in its pockets for some Rizla, “I think those pills I bought were a bit funny. I’m starting to feel a bit sick. Have we run out of vodka?”
Brilliant. Slow handclap to the first four dumbass months. If I sound as if I’m pissy then you’re right, I am. You hear that? That’s me scraping the goodwill barrel only to find it’s full of shit.
At the moment my fortunes seem to be in the hands of a bunch of clowns who run around in a wobbly wheeled car on which the doors fall off carrying an unfeasibly long ladder and honking a comedy horn. One of them is currently racing about with a bucket of whitewash and oh no! He’s going to step on that perilously positioned rake on the ground and doh! Right in the kisser!
You’re laughing* but he’s in charge of my finances. You should see who’s looking after my love life. Old Ronald fucking McDonald over there.
Yeah, I know. Lighten up. This could all be worse. I’ve just ingested nine Jaffa Cakes and for some people that’s nirvana, right? For most normal people that is. Some freaks will eat Wagon Wheels but I’ve stopped thinking about those perverts.
It will get better. I’m about to embark on a beginning so new and exciting that I’m actually shivering with anticipation. I’ve written a book. I’ve got awesome legs. I didn’t get that Ren and Stimpy tattoo off that drunk tattooist when I was fifteen. I’m in the enviable position of having no regrets and only good things to look forward to. Let me lose the clowns and I’ll be halfway there.
I just need the rest of the year to fix up and look sharp. It can still be done 2013, it can still be redeemed. Just straighten the hell up and take your hands out of your pockets when I’m talking to you, you feckless wastrel.
*you aren’t, I know that, but humour me okay?
