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Duggie Chop likes this site...Friday, 11 November 2011
I'm Duggie Chop - and I've franchised myself...
Hi, Duggie Chop here again. Been a while. There's a guy who's building a garage into a room. Or is he making a room out of a garage? Or conjuring up decorations out of cobwebs? Or does he just fancy Sarah Beeny or Kirsty Allslapper or sommat. Dunno ("Oi, Duggie - get to the point!" love from the 'eye in the sky') Yeahman, yeahman. Ok.
So, there's this guy and he says: "Duggie, like can I use yer blogspot for a bit. You know. I'm building a room in me garage" I'm like, John parrot-phrasing him there (or wotever the term is, like). He's from Denmark or somewhere. Might even be southern England. Anyway, somewhere miles away.
And I'm thinking. Why not? Not as if I've posted anything for about 11 months. What happened back then is I got folded into an envelope.
Yeh, right. An envelope - but not the type wot your thinking neither. No. It was like I was trapped in space like nowhere. You know, like the Yellow Submarine and Nowhere Man. Yer know? So me and me mate were both in there. Fishing, through that hole in Ringo's pocket, through the white. (I won't say ice, cos it wasn't. Just white. Like the Blue Peter studio when they used to show people round it from Jim'll Fix It (RIP Sir Jim'll Saveloy OBE). When they showed them around it was like a white face, with a couple of side-burn wearing speccy-four-eyes technicians laughing while manipulating a bit of flex or a camera).
So we were in that, 'envelope' like I called it for around 10 months, when this 'Danish' guy or someone from Sussex said about using me blog. His name's Dougie Spread (that's Dougie pronounced 'Doogey', just like a spaz). And I let him have the password.
Me and me mate got out of envelope after the guy found us. He was peering through me hole at the time. I thought he was a haddock. By the way, that Pike we had with us cleared off. You just can't get the fish these days.
Look - what I'm trying to say is...what I'm having trouble saying is...someone else might be appearing on these pages, talking about his garage. He's paying me and all, so it's not that bad. You just might get bored. So don't blame me! Right! Just complain to this, this Doooogey-spricking-Spread. Or whatever.
Anyway. We've (that's me and me mate) have been listening to the Muswell Hillbillies by the Kinks, from 1971. "It's brilliant, Doug" - hey readers, that's me mate talking. You know, this blog is Me and Duggie Chop Talk Music. He's 'me'.
He's right and all. It is a brilliant album. It's all, like, woody, like a beefy version of Billy Bragg's last album, but with devastatingly cool lyrics. "It's like someone having a cup of tea in the dust pan of middle America." He's right.
Friday, 10 December 2010
Duggie's dream - Marillion in your bed
This piece is transitional. Duggie has decided to let you into a secret part of his head…this is his recurring dream. After this we’ll get back into the story…the story we left so many of your human months ago.
Duggie: So, in my dream, I wake up and Fish from Marillion is standing over me. His tangly-rat-tail-like hair framing a welder’s face is making me scrunch up my nose. Twitching it to remove an invisible itch. [“Get to the point Dug…” No! It’s my dream, I’ll go where I wanna! “…ok, ok…cool it.” (Don’t forget, he’s a big lad is Duggie, I’m no messing with him, Steve.)]
Where was I? Oh, yeah, the invisble itch…and so I say: “Oi wot’s your game, pal…hey your Fish, aren’t you?”
Fish: Yeah, yeah, man. My friends call me Del [his real name is Derek Dick]
Duggie: What are you doing in my bedroom?
Fish: I’m not here…this is a dream….my dream!
Duggie: No way – this is my dream.
Fish: If that’s the case, where am I?
Duggie: Dunno, pal. None of my footin’ business! I’m the one asleep here.
Fish: Like hell you are! I’m on tour. I crashed out in a dunken stupor [hey Fish, this is fictional, don’t complain, I don’t mean it…Steve]
Duggie: I thought I could smell ale on yer breath. Look, what are we going to do now, I mean your hair is tickling my snozzle..and you’re hanging around in my bed.
Fish: I don’t know, I’ve never met a fellow dreamer in a dream. What can we do?
Duggie: I’ll count to 5 and we’ll both wake up.
(so Duggie counts to 5 and…)
The lights come up, it’s a full stage show. Maillion, 1984: Fugazi and Script for a Jester’s Tear. They’re also testing out the fledgling Kayleigh…
Duggie: This is awesome!
Fish winks from the stage: “never could resist the count…”
(just then a tall figure wearing black robes appears, as if from a bat…”No one can resist The Count)
[…and there we leave Duggie. He usually wakes up at this point. Screaming.]
Duggie: So, in my dream, I wake up and Fish from Marillion is standing over me. His tangly-rat-tail-like hair framing a welder’s face is making me scrunch up my nose. Twitching it to remove an invisible itch. [“Get to the point Dug…” No! It’s my dream, I’ll go where I wanna! “…ok, ok…cool it.” (Don’t forget, he’s a big lad is Duggie, I’m no messing with him, Steve.)]
Where was I? Oh, yeah, the invisble itch…and so I say: “Oi wot’s your game, pal…hey your Fish, aren’t you?”
Fish: Yeah, yeah, man. My friends call me Del [his real name is Derek Dick]
Duggie: What are you doing in my bedroom?
Fish: I’m not here…this is a dream….my dream!
Duggie: No way – this is my dream.
Fish: If that’s the case, where am I?
Duggie: Dunno, pal. None of my footin’ business! I’m the one asleep here.
Fish: Like hell you are! I’m on tour. I crashed out in a dunken stupor [hey Fish, this is fictional, don’t complain, I don’t mean it…Steve]
Duggie: I thought I could smell ale on yer breath. Look, what are we going to do now, I mean your hair is tickling my snozzle..and you’re hanging around in my bed.
Fish: I don’t know, I’ve never met a fellow dreamer in a dream. What can we do?
Duggie: I’ll count to 5 and we’ll both wake up.
(so Duggie counts to 5 and…)
The lights come up, it’s a full stage show. Maillion, 1984: Fugazi and Script for a Jester’s Tear. They’re also testing out the fledgling Kayleigh…
Duggie: This is awesome!
Fish winks from the stage: “never could resist the count…”
(just then a tall figure wearing black robes appears, as if from a bat…”No one can resist The Count)
[…and there we leave Duggie. He usually wakes up at this point. Screaming.]
Wednesday, 8 December 2010
Duggie’s mate: Tribute to Lennon…08/12/80
I remember sitting at me Nan’s house in the late 1970s watching telly. She made me a cuppa and handed me a copy of the Daily Mail, pointing at the picture of a tramp-like figure, seemingly staggering down a city street somewhere.
I read the caption, it went something like: “Lost Lennon, a has-been in New York.” He was wearing a floppy hat, a long ragged trench coat, baggy trousers and a long, ‘Dr Who’ scarf.
At the time, my only images of the Beatles had been gathered from the front cover of ‘Please, Please, Me’: four young men gazing from an office-block staircase and ‘Help’ with four men dressed in blue skiing outfits making funny shapes to camera.
I’d also seen ‘Hard Days Night’, a black and white flick based on a train and hanging around a posh hotel room.
So the tramp picture didn’t really link up in my mind with The Beatles. It was just the picture of an old geezer (to a 10 year old boy) in a newspaper.
Then one day, a couple of years later, a kid from school that I didn’t know too well cycled past me while I was waiting for the bus home.
“Oi, mate. John Lennon’s been shot!” he said.
I don’t remember responding to him. He was a bit of a dick. But that photo from the paper came back to me and for some reason the fact that he was from The Beatles. It all seemed to tie up together in my mind. From that moment on I was a Beatles fanatic. It made sense.
Thinking back, it’s like John was always alive when I discovered how great The Beatles were. That they weren’t just some old group that me mum put on the record player while she was hovering on a Saturday. But he was dead and it was a long time ago. Doesn’t seem like it, but it was.
Then every morning, our local radio station would play 'Borrowed Time' from the posthumously cobbled together 'Milk and Honey' album. And so, in 1984, Lennon was kind of alive again...in a kind of sub-standard way.
At least we still had The Beatles.
Favourite Beatles song: (changes lots, but at the moment it’s a tie between ‘Flying’ from ‘Magical Mystery Tour’, ‘Good Morning’ from ‘Sgt Peppers’ and ‘Strawberry fields Forever’.
Favourite Lennon song: ‘Mind Games’ (this also regularly changes)
I read the caption, it went something like: “Lost Lennon, a has-been in New York.” He was wearing a floppy hat, a long ragged trench coat, baggy trousers and a long, ‘Dr Who’ scarf.
At the time, my only images of the Beatles had been gathered from the front cover of ‘Please, Please, Me’: four young men gazing from an office-block staircase and ‘Help’ with four men dressed in blue skiing outfits making funny shapes to camera.
I’d also seen ‘Hard Days Night’, a black and white flick based on a train and hanging around a posh hotel room.
So the tramp picture didn’t really link up in my mind with The Beatles. It was just the picture of an old geezer (to a 10 year old boy) in a newspaper.
Then one day, a couple of years later, a kid from school that I didn’t know too well cycled past me while I was waiting for the bus home.
“Oi, mate. John Lennon’s been shot!” he said.
I don’t remember responding to him. He was a bit of a dick. But that photo from the paper came back to me and for some reason the fact that he was from The Beatles. It all seemed to tie up together in my mind. From that moment on I was a Beatles fanatic. It made sense.
Thinking back, it’s like John was always alive when I discovered how great The Beatles were. That they weren’t just some old group that me mum put on the record player while she was hovering on a Saturday. But he was dead and it was a long time ago. Doesn’t seem like it, but it was.
Then every morning, our local radio station would play 'Borrowed Time' from the posthumously cobbled together 'Milk and Honey' album. And so, in 1984, Lennon was kind of alive again...in a kind of sub-standard way.
At least we still had The Beatles.
Favourite Beatles song: (changes lots, but at the moment it’s a tie between ‘Flying’ from ‘Magical Mystery Tour’, ‘Good Morning’ from ‘Sgt Peppers’ and ‘Strawberry fields Forever’.
Favourite Lennon song: ‘Mind Games’ (this also regularly changes)
Monday, 6 December 2010
Donovan? or was it a dream?
“Sod Latvian heavy metal!” said this guy. He was standing on top a piano beneath the stairs at this stinking city-centre club in Riga.
Why stinking? For some reason there was a girl – fit, blonde, bit zitty – frying up a huge basket of chips right next to the stage.
Every now and then a cloud of fat-drenched steam engulfed the lead singer, making him shake his head wildly - a disharmonious Paul ‘Macca’ McCartney. He was a shouter, screaming in front of his incongruous Crass-inspired band of hippified long-hairs [purple prose alert, Duggie!]
“It’s the punk rooo-awk what we love!” continued the piano man. He actually said rock like that: rooo-awk, punching the air in time with his words.
“You’re not getting me alive!” blurted the lead singer for no apparent reason: “Punk is f**cked!” [come on! Gotta ‘bleep’ it - kids read this!] They launched into a rendition of ‘Punk is Dead’ from The Feeding of the Five Thousand [that’s the first Crass album from 1978 – true anarchy in the UK, not a fashion statement…]
The Latvians were confusing punk with heavy metal – or vice versa. I was just confused.
Behind the stage-side chip stall, sat a guy selling candy floss. Big pink whirls of spun sugar on a stick. Hmmm, could do with some of that. Need the energy.
Put me in mind of the jazzers of the past: kept playing all night drinking sugared water to keep going. Knackered their teeth, but at least their vibe was intact.
I gestured to the candy floss man and I thought, just for that moment: “I love everything in this god-almighty world, God knows I do!” Then I realised I was only quoting Donovan’s ‘Candy Man’.
I remember meeting Donovan [note to Donovan’s lawyers: this is a work of fiction…will that get me off the hook?] at a festival back in he ‘80s. Seemed like his career looked like it was on the skids. Maybe he was just past it. But I was a total fan.
Managed to catch the great man, stage side. He was wearing an ‘ethnic’ knitted hat and a hand made waistcoat [what? Nothing else, Duggie? – no, Steve, he had other stuff on, I was just trying to keep the prose clean and unclogged… ok, Dug, get on with it!]
“What are you doing in Hounslow?” I asked him.
“Being. Just being. How about you?” said Donovan.
“Being?” I said.
“Oh! You too! Good.” He said, and strummed a pure fresh chord on his really cool resonator guitar.
“No, I meant to ask the question. Being?” I said, realising that I wasn’t making myself clear.
“That’s a question. Being? Like ‘To be or not to be.’ It’s very deep.” Said Donovan. He really is pretty cool.
“Gets to the heart. Of where we. Are.” continued Donovan, looking at a passing aeroplane, way up above us, “He’s not going to Heathrow. Being. Somewhere else? Or here.” [this part used his spoken punctuation – not my fault…]
At this point I picked up a large T-shirt on Don’s merchandise stall. “How much?”
“Ten quid, man” said this long-bearded man, sitting to the side of mine and Don’s conversation. He was reading a thick paperback and smoking a pipe.
Donovan smiled and walked onto the stage. The sun shone.
So, that was the ‘80s, Hounslow free-festival.
“Just a single stick? Hey!” a sweet-smelling hand was waving up and down in front of my face… “Hmmm? No, yes, I’m a large,” In my mind I was still ordering a Donovan t-shirt from that hippy.
“A large what?” said the candy-floss man.
“Oh, ah. Yes. Sorry.” I said, “just the one.”
And I disappeared behind that pink cloud of sugar and sat down, while the band started to thrash out another late ‘70s punk cover and the guy on the piano did a handstand.
[Hmmm. Sweet! love Steve.]
Why stinking? For some reason there was a girl – fit, blonde, bit zitty – frying up a huge basket of chips right next to the stage.
Every now and then a cloud of fat-drenched steam engulfed the lead singer, making him shake his head wildly - a disharmonious Paul ‘Macca’ McCartney. He was a shouter, screaming in front of his incongruous Crass-inspired band of hippified long-hairs [purple prose alert, Duggie!]
“It’s the punk rooo-awk what we love!” continued the piano man. He actually said rock like that: rooo-awk, punching the air in time with his words.
“You’re not getting me alive!” blurted the lead singer for no apparent reason: “Punk is f**cked!” [come on! Gotta ‘bleep’ it - kids read this!] They launched into a rendition of ‘Punk is Dead’ from The Feeding of the Five Thousand [that’s the first Crass album from 1978 – true anarchy in the UK, not a fashion statement…]
The Latvians were confusing punk with heavy metal – or vice versa. I was just confused.
Behind the stage-side chip stall, sat a guy selling candy floss. Big pink whirls of spun sugar on a stick. Hmmm, could do with some of that. Need the energy.
Put me in mind of the jazzers of the past: kept playing all night drinking sugared water to keep going. Knackered their teeth, but at least their vibe was intact.
I gestured to the candy floss man and I thought, just for that moment: “I love everything in this god-almighty world, God knows I do!” Then I realised I was only quoting Donovan’s ‘Candy Man’.
I remember meeting Donovan [note to Donovan’s lawyers: this is a work of fiction…will that get me off the hook?] at a festival back in he ‘80s. Seemed like his career looked like it was on the skids. Maybe he was just past it. But I was a total fan.
Managed to catch the great man, stage side. He was wearing an ‘ethnic’ knitted hat and a hand made waistcoat [what? Nothing else, Duggie? – no, Steve, he had other stuff on, I was just trying to keep the prose clean and unclogged… ok, Dug, get on with it!]
“What are you doing in Hounslow?” I asked him.
“Being. Just being. How about you?” said Donovan.
“Being?” I said.
“Oh! You too! Good.” He said, and strummed a pure fresh chord on his really cool resonator guitar.
“No, I meant to ask the question. Being?” I said, realising that I wasn’t making myself clear.
“That’s a question. Being? Like ‘To be or not to be.’ It’s very deep.” Said Donovan. He really is pretty cool.
“Gets to the heart. Of where we. Are.” continued Donovan, looking at a passing aeroplane, way up above us, “He’s not going to Heathrow. Being. Somewhere else? Or here.” [this part used his spoken punctuation – not my fault…]
At this point I picked up a large T-shirt on Don’s merchandise stall. “How much?”
“Ten quid, man” said this long-bearded man, sitting to the side of mine and Don’s conversation. He was reading a thick paperback and smoking a pipe.
Donovan smiled and walked onto the stage. The sun shone.
So, that was the ‘80s, Hounslow free-festival.
“Just a single stick? Hey!” a sweet-smelling hand was waving up and down in front of my face… “Hmmm? No, yes, I’m a large,” In my mind I was still ordering a Donovan t-shirt from that hippy.
“A large what?” said the candy-floss man.
“Oh, ah. Yes. Sorry.” I said, “just the one.”
And I disappeared behind that pink cloud of sugar and sat down, while the band started to thrash out another late ‘70s punk cover and the guy on the piano did a handstand.
[Hmmm. Sweet! love Steve.]
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
Duggie's travel report special - Heavy Metal in Latvia
Travel report by Duggie Chop (and Mr Stickleback):
Heavy metal in Latvia is a kind of way of life – even more than the UK (or Germany…) I visited ‘Depo’, a club in Riga, Latvia’a capital and was totally spaced out by the sounds resonating from this basement venue. [Less of the purple prose, Dugg]
(“Nah”, said Mr Stickleback, “I reckon he handled that ok Mr Writerman.”)
[Ok, I’ll let him off…]
Can I continue? Says Duggie Chop to these two invisible critics.
(Mr Stickleback: “Of course!”)
[Steve the writer: “Yes”]
Thanks. As I was saying, at Depo a wild mix of sounds resonated from the basement, on comment I read on the web said: “a musical programme that makes the Glastonbury line-up look like a commercial hit parade” combined with: “Decor consisting solely of broken furniture and black paint, toilets graffitied with sexual obscenities (in various languages).”
Yeah that sums it up. However, on the night I visited, there was no Heavy Metal, just some crap guy playing records…loud [you mean a DJ, Dugg]
I left by the side door, passing a couple of geezers throwing up this spirit drink that you had to keep in the fridge. One of them was leaning against a scantily clad…[censored!] Hey, don’t censor me – I was about to say scantily clad police officer, who had placed his warm winter cloak over the body of a large dog that had just been knocked down by a drunken driver! [blimey, me and my imagination!]
This bloke wearing Viking garb tapped me on the shoulder, “Svieks,” he said (“That’s Latvian for ‘Hello’, informally,” Mr Stickleback) “es esmu Edgars…” Hey, said Duggie at this point. I dunno what yer on about pal, but I’m not liking your Viking garb…
“Piedodiet (“that means ‘sorry’” Mr S) My name is Edgars, I can help you discover what is good about the heavy metal in this town.”
He took me to another bar, a broken down hole full of bearded weirdos and we drunk some strong shots of something and he told me more….
To be continued….
Report from Mr Stickleback:
Being a fish, I can’t frequent human bars, so I had to content myself with exploring the waterways of old Latvia. There’s like 1200 rivers in the place. I was swimming down the Daugava, through the Hydroelectric dams and other Soviet era architecture. Couldn’t understand a word of what the other fish said, except one carp family from the Humber who had decided to winter in Latvia, due to the abundance of a certain type of algae, glowing in the unique pollution of the area.
“snot bad,” they said, devouring another small flotilla of the stuff, “sorta exotic, you know and it’s dead cheap to gerr ‘ere, too”
Dead was a word that immediately can to my mind as I left to make my way towards the Gulf of Riga and the Baltic.
More later. Ta!
Heavy metal in Latvia is a kind of way of life – even more than the UK (or Germany…) I visited ‘Depo’, a club in Riga, Latvia’a capital and was totally spaced out by the sounds resonating from this basement venue. [Less of the purple prose, Dugg]
(“Nah”, said Mr Stickleback, “I reckon he handled that ok Mr Writerman.”)
[Ok, I’ll let him off…]
Can I continue? Says Duggie Chop to these two invisible critics.
(Mr Stickleback: “Of course!”)
[Steve the writer: “Yes”]
Thanks. As I was saying, at Depo a wild mix of sounds resonated from the basement, on comment I read on the web said: “a musical programme that makes the Glastonbury line-up look like a commercial hit parade” combined with: “Decor consisting solely of broken furniture and black paint, toilets graffitied with sexual obscenities (in various languages).”
Yeah that sums it up. However, on the night I visited, there was no Heavy Metal, just some crap guy playing records…loud [you mean a DJ, Dugg]
I left by the side door, passing a couple of geezers throwing up this spirit drink that you had to keep in the fridge. One of them was leaning against a scantily clad…[censored!] Hey, don’t censor me – I was about to say scantily clad police officer, who had placed his warm winter cloak over the body of a large dog that had just been knocked down by a drunken driver! [blimey, me and my imagination!]
This bloke wearing Viking garb tapped me on the shoulder, “Svieks,” he said (“That’s Latvian for ‘Hello’, informally,” Mr Stickleback) “es esmu Edgars…” Hey, said Duggie at this point. I dunno what yer on about pal, but I’m not liking your Viking garb…
“Piedodiet (“that means ‘sorry’” Mr S) My name is Edgars, I can help you discover what is good about the heavy metal in this town.”
He took me to another bar, a broken down hole full of bearded weirdos and we drunk some strong shots of something and he told me more….
To be continued….
Report from Mr Stickleback:
Being a fish, I can’t frequent human bars, so I had to content myself with exploring the waterways of old Latvia. There’s like 1200 rivers in the place. I was swimming down the Daugava, through the Hydroelectric dams and other Soviet era architecture. Couldn’t understand a word of what the other fish said, except one carp family from the Humber who had decided to winter in Latvia, due to the abundance of a certain type of algae, glowing in the unique pollution of the area.
“snot bad,” they said, devouring another small flotilla of the stuff, “sorta exotic, you know and it’s dead cheap to gerr ‘ere, too”
Dead was a word that immediately can to my mind as I left to make my way towards the Gulf of Riga and the Baltic.
More later. Ta!
Thursday, 18 November 2010
Brrrrrrrrrroooogh-fffffffff. Blimey, the dust in here!
[Duggie shakes his head...vigorously, it seems]
"Gerrroffff!" Says his mate, "that's a flamin' snow storm!"
"You saying I've got Dandruff?" says Duggie, and I tell you, he's a large fella.
They start wrestling, like the guys in The Rainbow by Ken Russell (but not naked, too cold for that)
"Hey you two," says the writer, "what do you think you're doing?"
"Ugh?" [they say this collectively]
"Your public are watching..." says the writet.
"But we've been left in this bloody cupboard - along with a load of dancing porcelain figures for months!" says Duggie, spitting out a mouthful of hairy dust and flies.
"...and Duggie's been playing only Tangerine Dream all that time," says his mate.
"What the soundtrack-writing Krautrockers?" says the writer.
"You got it. And he's only using vinyl, Steve didn't give us a CD player when he locked us away..." says Duggie's mate, watching Dug unwrap a Twix, his first in 5 months.
"Mmmmmmmmmn" scrunch, scrunch, "ORRRmmmmmmm" says Duggie, immersed in Twix-dom.
"Alpha Centuri's gotta groove to it, but Zeit. Huh! I had to focus on the crackles on the record, it was weirding me out and no mistake!" said his mate, shaking hands with one of the porcelain dancers.
"Enchanted, my sir," says the dancer, curtsying, "do not say you are leaving us. So soon?"
"So soon," said Duggie's mate, "we've been in here for months!" He quite fancied this dancer, despite her being a 6 inch tall figurine.
"Months! Ha!" she said, "Myself and the troupe have been in here since 1956."
[NOTE: Porcelain timescales have no human comparison]
"mmmScrun...ttt, MMMwe...mmmm..brrr...here... now!" said twix-ed up Duggie.
"Duggie says," says Duggie's mate, "we're back and here to discuss music and other things. To pick up the thread that we dropped sometime ago. To bodly go, where no piece of psychedelic surrealism has gone before..."
[Oi - none of that splittinglyness of the infinitives...even in a paraphrase]
The writer pseaks: "Until next time viewers...I think it's Lativan Heavy metal then. Bet you can't wait."
["nor can I," says Mr Stickleback]
"Gerrroffff!" Says his mate, "that's a flamin' snow storm!"
"You saying I've got Dandruff?" says Duggie, and I tell you, he's a large fella.
They start wrestling, like the guys in The Rainbow by Ken Russell (but not naked, too cold for that)
"Hey you two," says the writer, "what do you think you're doing?"
"Ugh?" [they say this collectively]
"Your public are watching..." says the writet.
"But we've been left in this bloody cupboard - along with a load of dancing porcelain figures for months!" says Duggie, spitting out a mouthful of hairy dust and flies.
"...and Duggie's been playing only Tangerine Dream all that time," says his mate.
"What the soundtrack-writing Krautrockers?" says the writer.
"You got it. And he's only using vinyl, Steve didn't give us a CD player when he locked us away..." says Duggie's mate, watching Dug unwrap a Twix, his first in 5 months.
"Mmmmmmmmmn" scrunch, scrunch, "ORRRmmmmmmm" says Duggie, immersed in Twix-dom.
"Alpha Centuri's gotta groove to it, but Zeit. Huh! I had to focus on the crackles on the record, it was weirding me out and no mistake!" said his mate, shaking hands with one of the porcelain dancers.
"Enchanted, my sir," says the dancer, curtsying, "do not say you are leaving us. So soon?"
"So soon," said Duggie's mate, "we've been in here for months!" He quite fancied this dancer, despite her being a 6 inch tall figurine.
"Months! Ha!" she said, "Myself and the troupe have been in here since 1956."
[NOTE: Porcelain timescales have no human comparison]
"mmmScrun...ttt, MMMwe...mmmm..brrr...here... now!" said twix-ed up Duggie.
"Duggie says," says Duggie's mate, "we're back and here to discuss music and other things. To pick up the thread that we dropped sometime ago. To bodly go, where no piece of psychedelic surrealism has gone before..."
[Oi - none of that splittinglyness of the infinitives...even in a paraphrase]
The writer pseaks: "Until next time viewers...I think it's Lativan Heavy metal then. Bet you can't wait."
["nor can I," says Mr Stickleback]
Thursday, 24 June 2010
Duggie and the cycle ride (that's where he's been...) - Iggy and The Stooges...
Hello!
I'm back...[sorry? who are you? - "I'm Duggie, Duggie Chop. You know me. I was sitting around like, talking about music with me mate. Loads of people surrounding us, some real, some figments...or fig rolls...or...perhaps I'm just hungry after all this cycling..." Oh, cycling, I wondered where you'd been. Did remember you really!]
Once again, hello!
Back in May, I was all set to take a breather. To return to me and me mate sitting down, fishing, reviewing the records that matter to us - for you, dear reader, when...I pressed play on me iPod and there was The Stooges:"Search and Destroy"off Raw Power[I'm a street-walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm..."yep, that's how it starts"]
So, I kept cycling and the iPod kept shuffling Iggy Pop and Stooges tracks. And I remembered going to see Iggy at the old Hammersmith Odeon back in 1986...totally hyperactive, he didn't stop moving, even when the music had finished, jiggling on and off the stage like a walking epileptic fit...then I was back in the late '60s with 'No Fun' - total boredom in a song, and such and exciting thing to listen to. Inspiration for the punks in the 70s, like the Sex Pistols who covered it.
Oh yeah, and I just remembered, Malcolm [McLaren) copped it while I've been away, no more cash from chaos...and the world has slipped on.
Slipped on into an entirely more boring period, when you can make money but you can't have fun...
"Hey Duggie," said Duggie's mate, cycling just behind Duggie, where d'ya put that tupperware container with last night's Lasagne in it?"
"Bloody Hell, you always muck up my train of thought. I was just going to say that Iggy and the Stooges were the original punks."
His mate thought for a moment, then concentrated once more on the cycle path as he'd neglected to see a small rock under his wheel and had to rescue his handle bars from spinning round, "oh, suuugaaaaaar...woah."
"Are you agreeing? Or what?" said Duggie, pulling the Lasagne box from the deep inside pocket of his mountaineering anorak.
"Um. Yeah, s'pose so. I'd like to include 'Love' as well. Cos they were proto-punks, too."
"Proto-punks? What you swallowed an edition of Mojo or something?"
With that they stopped and set up the camping stove to warm up the Lasagne.
"Let's review one of Iggy's records next," said Duggie.
"Ok, but first we've got to follow-up some of the other stories. I mean, we haven't heard from Nels and Hair Tom for ages, that artist is still in his never-to-open-cafe..."
"And what happened to Sergei the fledgling chip shop owner?"
"And Geoffrey from Rainbow...and the Pike."
["Oi! What about me?" (the voice of Mr Stickleback) "Never ind that bleedin' Pike!"]
The Lasagne started to bubble. Mr Ting was passing with a chip delivery and, as luck would have it, had a surplus ("trouble-makers, you know, they make up addresses and have me running all over the city with unwanted soggy chips!") So furnished Duggie and his mate with a couple of portions to go with their meal.
"Life's great, isn't it?" said Duggie.
The clouds were building-up, filtering the meagre sunshine.
"Life's great," said his mate.
I'm back...[sorry? who are you? - "I'm Duggie, Duggie Chop. You know me. I was sitting around like, talking about music with me mate. Loads of people surrounding us, some real, some figments...or fig rolls...or...perhaps I'm just hungry after all this cycling..." Oh, cycling, I wondered where you'd been. Did remember you really!]
Once again, hello!
Back in May, I was all set to take a breather. To return to me and me mate sitting down, fishing, reviewing the records that matter to us - for you, dear reader, when...I pressed play on me iPod and there was The Stooges:"Search and Destroy"off Raw Power[I'm a street-walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm..."yep, that's how it starts"]
So, I kept cycling and the iPod kept shuffling Iggy Pop and Stooges tracks. And I remembered going to see Iggy at the old Hammersmith Odeon back in 1986...totally hyperactive, he didn't stop moving, even when the music had finished, jiggling on and off the stage like a walking epileptic fit...then I was back in the late '60s with 'No Fun' - total boredom in a song, and such and exciting thing to listen to. Inspiration for the punks in the 70s, like the Sex Pistols who covered it.
Oh yeah, and I just remembered, Malcolm [McLaren) copped it while I've been away, no more cash from chaos...and the world has slipped on.
Slipped on into an entirely more boring period, when you can make money but you can't have fun...
"Hey Duggie," said Duggie's mate, cycling just behind Duggie, where d'ya put that tupperware container with last night's Lasagne in it?"
"Bloody Hell, you always muck up my train of thought. I was just going to say that Iggy and the Stooges were the original punks."
His mate thought for a moment, then concentrated once more on the cycle path as he'd neglected to see a small rock under his wheel and had to rescue his handle bars from spinning round, "oh, suuugaaaaaar...woah."
"Are you agreeing? Or what?" said Duggie, pulling the Lasagne box from the deep inside pocket of his mountaineering anorak.
"Um. Yeah, s'pose so. I'd like to include 'Love' as well. Cos they were proto-punks, too."
"Proto-punks? What you swallowed an edition of Mojo or something?"
With that they stopped and set up the camping stove to warm up the Lasagne.
"Let's review one of Iggy's records next," said Duggie.
"Ok, but first we've got to follow-up some of the other stories. I mean, we haven't heard from Nels and Hair Tom for ages, that artist is still in his never-to-open-cafe..."
"And what happened to Sergei the fledgling chip shop owner?"
"And Geoffrey from Rainbow...and the Pike."
["Oi! What about me?" (the voice of Mr Stickleback) "Never ind that bleedin' Pike!"]
The Lasagne started to bubble. Mr Ting was passing with a chip delivery and, as luck would have it, had a surplus ("trouble-makers, you know, they make up addresses and have me running all over the city with unwanted soggy chips!") So furnished Duggie and his mate with a couple of portions to go with their meal.
"Life's great, isn't it?" said Duggie.
The clouds were building-up, filtering the meagre sunshine.
"Life's great," said his mate.
Sunday, 16 May 2010
Sturgess Cafe - and there's (yet) more
[...and they said it would never last! - Duggie reaches the half-century (in posts, no years...]
“So, this is ‘art’, is it?” said the local paper journalist, a 17 year-old creative writer, with ambitions to be investigative. His main interest was writing Dungeons and Dragons games and scripts for gothic, graphic novels, “I mean to say, ‘art’ for the people…”
[“So this is ‘art’, is it?” almost as much a cliché as the art it is usually describing. Let’s analyse this statement for a minute - oh, by the way, my name’s Quentin The Art, and I’m a Welsh art expert – that’s an expert in art who happens to have been born in Wales, rather than a critic of Max Boyce’s occasional sketches.
Art, to the local journalist, is a term that encompasses everything from Constable to Bacon. It probably includes street and performance art – and, most certainly, the ‘Turner Prize’.
But, in reality, the ‘art’ at the heart of the journalist’s question is the work of layabouts, potentially left-wingers and most certainly university educated and not in the business of producing something like a spanner or tube of toothpaste, that UK plc could export to foreign outposts. And certainly not making money for some faceless fat-cat or mega-global corporation.
It’s as if: to think, to reflect, to draw attention to the foibles of humanity, is somehow a lesser act than, say, making a bracket to hang a basket of flowers on, or manufacturing one of those plastic things that you put in a can of smooth-flow beer to make it frothy.
We should pay our poets as much as we pay our Doctors – unless, of course, you need medical attention, when (stop Quentin – it’s you who needs medical attention, my friend!)]
“Yeah it’s a comment,” said Nyman, affecting his most convincing (in his mind) rebel-with-a-cause poses: a curled up lip, uneven shoulders, slouching against the wall (unfortunately, the journalist mis-read the body language, noting in his pad: “his work might be rubbish and a waste of money, but the artist has had to battle against an obviously deformed body, with a peculiar facial expression and wonky posture, to pursue his art…”), “I’m commenting on the invisibility of the modern High Street, the way a business can just come and go with no one noticing, or caring, due to the ‘bloody’ malls and out of town supermarkets…”
“Can I stop you there,” said the journalist, picking a piece of bacon rind from his tooth with a thumb-nail, “people have noticed the café. I mean that’s why I’m here. People want to come in. I mean, what about the guy on the Mobility scooter? This café used to be his world!”
“But that was 1957 – he’s gaga! He lives in the ‘50s,” said Seeke, smirking all the while.
“Let me handle this, please Seeke,” said Nyman, “he was transposing memory on the manifestation of today. He didn’t really want to come into our, modern day café.”
“And the old lady and her friend who tried to buy a tea…”
“You know, sometimes art is cruel. It takes guts for an artist to start telling the truth. You know?” said Nyman. He was beginning to perspire.
“I mean, I don’t know why you don’t open the Caff,” said the journo, “your bacon butties are pukka – and your tes. The best in town…”
“But it’s art! Don’t you see? Art!” said Nyman.
“I think he knows,” said Seeke, “but prefers your cooking.”
Nyman thought for a moment, and the only argument he could come up with, in favour of the art, was the fact that a criminal skinhead was now involved in extremely violent performance art in Dorest. He thought it might be best not to mention it.
“Look,” said Nyman, “give me a nice write-up, and I’ll give you another cup of tea…”
“Alright then,” said the journo, who was already late for an interview with an amorous window-cleaner. [“And they say times change, huh!” – thanks for that comment, Mr Askwith, says Duggie]
“So, this is ‘art’, is it?” said the local paper journalist, a 17 year-old creative writer, with ambitions to be investigative. His main interest was writing Dungeons and Dragons games and scripts for gothic, graphic novels, “I mean to say, ‘art’ for the people…”
[“So this is ‘art’, is it?” almost as much a cliché as the art it is usually describing. Let’s analyse this statement for a minute - oh, by the way, my name’s Quentin The Art, and I’m a Welsh art expert – that’s an expert in art who happens to have been born in Wales, rather than a critic of Max Boyce’s occasional sketches.
Art, to the local journalist, is a term that encompasses everything from Constable to Bacon. It probably includes street and performance art – and, most certainly, the ‘Turner Prize’.
But, in reality, the ‘art’ at the heart of the journalist’s question is the work of layabouts, potentially left-wingers and most certainly university educated and not in the business of producing something like a spanner or tube of toothpaste, that UK plc could export to foreign outposts. And certainly not making money for some faceless fat-cat or mega-global corporation.
It’s as if: to think, to reflect, to draw attention to the foibles of humanity, is somehow a lesser act than, say, making a bracket to hang a basket of flowers on, or manufacturing one of those plastic things that you put in a can of smooth-flow beer to make it frothy.
We should pay our poets as much as we pay our Doctors – unless, of course, you need medical attention, when (stop Quentin – it’s you who needs medical attention, my friend!)]
“Yeah it’s a comment,” said Nyman, affecting his most convincing (in his mind) rebel-with-a-cause poses: a curled up lip, uneven shoulders, slouching against the wall (unfortunately, the journalist mis-read the body language, noting in his pad: “his work might be rubbish and a waste of money, but the artist has had to battle against an obviously deformed body, with a peculiar facial expression and wonky posture, to pursue his art…”), “I’m commenting on the invisibility of the modern High Street, the way a business can just come and go with no one noticing, or caring, due to the ‘bloody’ malls and out of town supermarkets…”
“Can I stop you there,” said the journalist, picking a piece of bacon rind from his tooth with a thumb-nail, “people have noticed the café. I mean that’s why I’m here. People want to come in. I mean, what about the guy on the Mobility scooter? This café used to be his world!”
“But that was 1957 – he’s gaga! He lives in the ‘50s,” said Seeke, smirking all the while.
“Let me handle this, please Seeke,” said Nyman, “he was transposing memory on the manifestation of today. He didn’t really want to come into our, modern day café.”
“And the old lady and her friend who tried to buy a tea…”
“You know, sometimes art is cruel. It takes guts for an artist to start telling the truth. You know?” said Nyman. He was beginning to perspire.
“I mean, I don’t know why you don’t open the Caff,” said the journo, “your bacon butties are pukka – and your tes. The best in town…”
“But it’s art! Don’t you see? Art!” said Nyman.
“I think he knows,” said Seeke, “but prefers your cooking.”
Nyman thought for a moment, and the only argument he could come up with, in favour of the art, was the fact that a criminal skinhead was now involved in extremely violent performance art in Dorest. He thought it might be best not to mention it.
“Look,” said Nyman, “give me a nice write-up, and I’ll give you another cup of tea…”
“Alright then,” said the journo, who was already late for an interview with an amorous window-cleaner. [“And they say times change, huh!” – thanks for that comment, Mr Askwith, says Duggie]
Monday, 10 May 2010
Sturgess Cafe Pt 4...the pensioner speaks
Duggie says:
“Collect ideas like collecting rain in a bucket – just check there are no holes in the side…”
Back to the Sturgess Café.
“The ideas man, the instigator. As long as it’s not see you later alligator,” said Seeke.
“What are you on about?” said Nyman Chaw-Derek, Seeke’s partner and amazing conceptual artist – [that’s his description]. He’s the instigator, the ideas man. The café is his baby.
[Here’s the link to the previous part, so you can catch up…]
Things had settled down after the incident with the angry skinhead.
Turned out he’d just been released from remand, bit peeved due to the fact that he hadn’t done anything and had been locked up for it. So he’d taken out his anger on the café.
But when he found out about Nyman’s whole Arts Council funding scam [“erm…actually,” says Nyman, stepping through the invisible curtain between us and him, the character in my story, “I’m a professional artist. Sturgess Café is a conceptual piece…(he’s so post-modern)…and they don’t just give anyone a grant, you know]
Last heard, the skinhead was attempting to introduce violence, extreme violence into street theatre, somewhere in Dorset.
The local paper, ‘The Bugle’, had found out about the ‘Café Project’ following a letter writing campaign by the woman on the bus and a disabled pensioner, who’s mobility scooter always seemed to run out on his frequent visits too or from the café to buy a non-existent midday bacon sandwich.
“Oi awl-ways yoused to go to that caffy, when old Frank had it,” said the disabled pensioner, “ee dun a noice bacan butty, ‘im. They can’t keep nuffink the same…the police are all 16 years old…litter on the streets…get them in the army…National Service…corporal punishment…capital punishment…”
[…by the way, Café owner Frank died of complications related to a pork allergy in 1957.]
Duggie says: “to be continued…I think the hole is showing, I can hear a drip, drip drip…”
“Collect ideas like collecting rain in a bucket – just check there are no holes in the side…”
Back to the Sturgess Café.
“The ideas man, the instigator. As long as it’s not see you later alligator,” said Seeke.
“What are you on about?” said Nyman Chaw-Derek, Seeke’s partner and amazing conceptual artist – [that’s his description]. He’s the instigator, the ideas man. The café is his baby.
[Here’s the link to the previous part, so you can catch up…]
Things had settled down after the incident with the angry skinhead.
Turned out he’d just been released from remand, bit peeved due to the fact that he hadn’t done anything and had been locked up for it. So he’d taken out his anger on the café.
But when he found out about Nyman’s whole Arts Council funding scam [“erm…actually,” says Nyman, stepping through the invisible curtain between us and him, the character in my story, “I’m a professional artist. Sturgess Café is a conceptual piece…(he’s so post-modern)…and they don’t just give anyone a grant, you know]
Last heard, the skinhead was attempting to introduce violence, extreme violence into street theatre, somewhere in Dorset.
The local paper, ‘The Bugle’, had found out about the ‘Café Project’ following a letter writing campaign by the woman on the bus and a disabled pensioner, who’s mobility scooter always seemed to run out on his frequent visits too or from the café to buy a non-existent midday bacon sandwich.
“Oi awl-ways yoused to go to that caffy, when old Frank had it,” said the disabled pensioner, “ee dun a noice bacan butty, ‘im. They can’t keep nuffink the same…the police are all 16 years old…litter on the streets…get them in the army…National Service…corporal punishment…capital punishment…”
[…by the way, Café owner Frank died of complications related to a pork allergy in 1957.]
Duggie says: “to be continued…I think the hole is showing, I can hear a drip, drip drip…”
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Journey to Beatlemania - although it's probably not about that at all...
Geoffrey decided to give them a lift, that’s Duggie, his mate and the cyclist - let’s forget about the Pike, he’s sleeping.
[“We always sleep with our eyes open,” said the Pike, “actually, we haven’t got any eyelids anyway.”]
Geoffrey had wanted to pop into town to pick up Zippy and George from the dry-cleaners [“What!” said the Cyclist, “I thought they were real!”]
Bungle was waiting outside the shop.
[“Blimey!” said Duggie, “I thought there was a man inside Bungle!”
“...err there is,” said Geoffrey, “he’s just a little bit weird.”]
This being 1982, they could only find cheese sandwiches with curled-up crusts for sale locally. The Greek newsagent imported them from Hounslow via Zaire and a dodgy deal at Heathrow Airport.
[“My cheese tastes like rubber!” said Duggies’s mate.
“No, that is rubber,” said the Greek, “you’re eating an inner-tube.”]
“Look,” said the Cyclist, “I need a pint. We might have been in a lager bubble, but I’ve finished all me Red Stripe!”
“What, you’ll be lucky,” said Geoffrey, “it’s arf-past 2!”
[One of the problems with time-travel is that you’re tuned into the culture and traditions of your time, not the time you’re travelling in. You’re lumbered with that. In this case, the culture and tradition of getting as rat-arsed as possible before closing time, in order to get through to 6 or maybe 7pm when the pub doors open again.]
“What am I gonna do? said the Cyclist, “is there a Tesco or something round here?”
“Hey, Cyclist,” said a man on the radio - a big ghetto blaster that they were walking past.
“Who me?” said the Cyclist.
“Yes you. It’s 1982, mate, you’ve got more chance of buying booze from Al Johnson in prohibition Chicago than you have getting a drink round here after closing time.”
“Thanks radio man!” said Duggie, “and by the way, you’re thinking of Al Capone, not Al Jolson!”
“You’re wrong Duggie-boy.” said the man on the radio, “I’m talking about Al Jolson who owns an ‘offie’ in Illinois.”
Geoffrey: “We can always try the garage off that new bypass, there’s a Russian guy in there. He’ll serve us.”
“I know the place,” said Duggie, “and you’re dead right he’ll serve us! He’s in 2010.”
“Oh, is he?” said Geoffrey, “so that’s why my newspaper’s got colour photos in it. And I never knew that Nat King Cole had a daughter called Cheryl.”
Bungle declined to come, said he had a picnic to attend in the woods.
Geoffrey turned on his car radio and - yeah you can guess it - the ‘man on the radio’ was broadcasting: “Ok you lot, I’m gonna guide you through the time tunnel. Don’t want you getting lost now. But that’s after this classic tune from the mighty Hair Tom: “Plastic - didn’t know - Jam”, their Beatles pastiche.
[Yes, Hair Tom got there first. In 1982, no one was bothered about The Beatles. This was before the obligatory ‘A’ Level in Beatles Studies was handed out to every budding guitar band.
Their work also pre-dated the ‘Tears for Fears’ travesty of a Beatles Pastiche - Sowing the Seeds of Love and the more memorable XTC Oranges and Lemons and Dukes of the Stratosfear stuff.]
“Beatles, did you say The Beatles,” said Duggie....
“The Beatles” Said Duggie’s mate, “ we haven’t talked about them yet.”
“Yet,” said Duggie.
And they both went all starry eyed and had silly grins on their faces as Geoffrey’s car chugged off to the petrol station in the 21st Century.
“Oi - wot’s going on?” said The Cyclist
[“Nah Cyclist,” said the pedant, “that’s Marvin Gaye, not The Beatles”]
“Wot about my cans of Red Stripe - never mind the bleedin’ Beatles.”
“Ho, ho, Zippy,” said George, curled up in sports bag in the boot, “this is exciting, isn’t it”
“No, George, it’s dark!” said Zippy.
[“We always sleep with our eyes open,” said the Pike, “actually, we haven’t got any eyelids anyway.”]
Geoffrey had wanted to pop into town to pick up Zippy and George from the dry-cleaners [“What!” said the Cyclist, “I thought they were real!”]
Bungle was waiting outside the shop.
[“Blimey!” said Duggie, “I thought there was a man inside Bungle!”
“...err there is,” said Geoffrey, “he’s just a little bit weird.”]
This being 1982, they could only find cheese sandwiches with curled-up crusts for sale locally. The Greek newsagent imported them from Hounslow via Zaire and a dodgy deal at Heathrow Airport.
[“My cheese tastes like rubber!” said Duggies’s mate.
“No, that is rubber,” said the Greek, “you’re eating an inner-tube.”]
“Look,” said the Cyclist, “I need a pint. We might have been in a lager bubble, but I’ve finished all me Red Stripe!”
“What, you’ll be lucky,” said Geoffrey, “it’s arf-past 2!”
[One of the problems with time-travel is that you’re tuned into the culture and traditions of your time, not the time you’re travelling in. You’re lumbered with that. In this case, the culture and tradition of getting as rat-arsed as possible before closing time, in order to get through to 6 or maybe 7pm when the pub doors open again.]
“What am I gonna do? said the Cyclist, “is there a Tesco or something round here?”
“Hey, Cyclist,” said a man on the radio - a big ghetto blaster that they were walking past.
“Who me?” said the Cyclist.
“Yes you. It’s 1982, mate, you’ve got more chance of buying booze from Al Johnson in prohibition Chicago than you have getting a drink round here after closing time.”
“Thanks radio man!” said Duggie, “and by the way, you’re thinking of Al Capone, not Al Jolson!”
“You’re wrong Duggie-boy.” said the man on the radio, “I’m talking about Al Jolson who owns an ‘offie’ in Illinois.”
Geoffrey: “We can always try the garage off that new bypass, there’s a Russian guy in there. He’ll serve us.”
“I know the place,” said Duggie, “and you’re dead right he’ll serve us! He’s in 2010.”
“Oh, is he?” said Geoffrey, “so that’s why my newspaper’s got colour photos in it. And I never knew that Nat King Cole had a daughter called Cheryl.”
Bungle declined to come, said he had a picnic to attend in the woods.
Geoffrey turned on his car radio and - yeah you can guess it - the ‘man on the radio’ was broadcasting: “Ok you lot, I’m gonna guide you through the time tunnel. Don’t want you getting lost now. But that’s after this classic tune from the mighty Hair Tom: “Plastic - didn’t know - Jam”, their Beatles pastiche.
[Yes, Hair Tom got there first. In 1982, no one was bothered about The Beatles. This was before the obligatory ‘A’ Level in Beatles Studies was handed out to every budding guitar band.
Their work also pre-dated the ‘Tears for Fears’ travesty of a Beatles Pastiche - Sowing the Seeds of Love and the more memorable XTC Oranges and Lemons and Dukes of the Stratosfear stuff.]
“Beatles, did you say The Beatles,” said Duggie....
“The Beatles” Said Duggie’s mate, “ we haven’t talked about them yet.”
“Yet,” said Duggie.
And they both went all starry eyed and had silly grins on their faces as Geoffrey’s car chugged off to the petrol station in the 21st Century.
“Oi - wot’s going on?” said The Cyclist
[“Nah Cyclist,” said the pedant, “that’s Marvin Gaye, not The Beatles”]
“Wot about my cans of Red Stripe - never mind the bleedin’ Beatles.”
“Ho, ho, Zippy,” said George, curled up in sports bag in the boot, “this is exciting, isn’t it”
“No, George, it’s dark!” said Zippy.
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
Sergei's second ending...with a little help from Ray Moore
As seen in the last Sergei instalment…
He'd seen the movies. Read thrillers. Been on the New York subway of the pre-zero-tolerance 1980s (while on tour as a fledgling shot-putter for the Moscow Worldwide Comrade Sports Team). But nothing prepared Sergei for the sight of a cold gun-barrel pointing in the region of his third eye.
He stopped dancing, pissed himself and tried to focus somewhere in the middle distance, near the petrol-pump that said 'cards only'. He didn't want to look the robber in the eyes, following the same philosophy that urges you not to lock eyes with a wild dog.
Two things could now happen and here's the first [well, an infinite array of things really, but as a limited author, Steve has selected two. We'll play this like a movie that has an ending and an alternate ending on the DVD reissue.
Now Sergei has recovered from post-traumatic shock, here’s the second ending]:
[Playing in the background: the late BBC Radio DJ Ray Moore singing: ‘O My Father Had a Rabbit’ for charity back in 1986…
Ray Moore: O My Father had a Rabbit and he thought it was a duck so he stuck it on the table with its legs cocked up
Sergei couldn’t avoid the almost touchable smell of the robber’s breath: a mixture of halitosis, stale smoke, Worcester sauce flavoured crisps (coming in waves of tiny belches), over-chewed spearmint gum and garlic. Sergei always had a good sense of smell and taste, for example he knew the difference between red and white wine without even looking at it, quite an achievement where he came from.
The smell drew a picture of the robber as a man, despite the fact that his face was covered by a long woolly hat with eyeholes, [that’s a balaclava, Sergei – but don’t worry, it’s nothing to do with the Crimean War] he was a smoker who ate junk food and failed to clean his teeth in between.
“I said, the contents of your till…” Nothing prepared Sergei for having a gun poked in his face. Because, unlike the cowardly Sergei whose body he usually occupied, this Sergei became a have-a-go hero.
The kind of citizen that you read about in the local papers (and The Sun) either collecting an award from some Mayor – or as an embarrassing school photo due to the fact that their contemporary image has had its head blown off, “…and all the fags you can carry, sunshine.”
“I don’t speak ingliss too well. Pa rooskie,” said Sergei feigning foreigness.
Ray Moore: He mixed a bowl of stuffing and he left it on the shelf…
“A roosky, from Moscock I shouldn’t wonder [that’s a reference to a 1980s Port advert – Cockburns Special Reserve – “…so I come from Moscock?” said the Russian Captain, who mispronounced Cockburns as ‘Cock Burns’ rather than ‘Co Burns’, so assumed that Moscow must be ‘Mos Cock’ in English. The British Captain replied: “Yes, you probably do…” as if everyone in the world should instantly recognise the name Cockburns as Co Burns.] well hand us all yer roubles and cigaretteskies, chum.”
For some reason, this robber’s lexicon scoured the ages, ‘chum’ being a term of endearment from the early to mid 20th Century: for example, “let’s get chummy back in the boat…” in movie depictions of Dunkirk.
“Bert vitch permp doos you needing? Comrade?” maybe Sergei was overdoing it a bit.
Ray Moore: but when he came to stuff the duck the duck had stuffed itself…
And that was the last from Mr Moore as the robber pointed his revolver at the radio and blasted.
“Look man,” said the robber, now aping the swinging ‘60s, “you comprendez vous? [sic] give me the dough!” said the robber.
“Would you like white sliced or brown? We have both…” said Sergei, edging towards the door.
Why was Sergei so determined to be a hero? It’s not as if he cared about the crappy Fuel&FagsCo organisation that employed him.
Who cared if they lost 40,000 fags and a day’s takings? Was it worth getting a bullet through the temple for? Perhaps it was the isolation. Maybe he was going do-lally, putting in so many shifts in the middle-of-nowhere service station to save up enough hard-earned to buy his chip van. Stuck in a place lacking human contact.
“Get away from that door! Get Away!” shouted the robber, making a leap past the black-and-white-chocolate-special-edition Mars Bar stand.
Sergei dived out onto the forecourt of the petrol station and grabbed a pump nozzle.
The robber reached the door and launched himself through, as Sergei lit the end of the nozzle, spraying flames and turning the robber to a charcoal crisp almost instantly.
The robber’s body crumbled onto the barbeque display next to the newspaper stand. By the way, somewhat ironically, the robber’s surname was Crisp.
The whole event had been witnessed by Geoffrey from Rainbow, who’d just arrived in his clean car, a car that contained Duggie, his mate, The cyclist and a pike sloshing around in bucket of water.
“Blimey!” said Geoffrey, stopping next to the diesel pump by mistake.
He'd seen the movies. Read thrillers. Been on the New York subway of the pre-zero-tolerance 1980s (while on tour as a fledgling shot-putter for the Moscow Worldwide Comrade Sports Team). But nothing prepared Sergei for the sight of a cold gun-barrel pointing in the region of his third eye.
He stopped dancing, pissed himself and tried to focus somewhere in the middle distance, near the petrol-pump that said 'cards only'. He didn't want to look the robber in the eyes, following the same philosophy that urges you not to lock eyes with a wild dog.
Two things could now happen and here's the first [well, an infinite array of things really, but as a limited author, Steve has selected two. We'll play this like a movie that has an ending and an alternate ending on the DVD reissue.
Now Sergei has recovered from post-traumatic shock, here’s the second ending]:
[Playing in the background: the late BBC Radio DJ Ray Moore singing: ‘O My Father Had a Rabbit’ for charity back in 1986…
Ray Moore: O My Father had a Rabbit and he thought it was a duck so he stuck it on the table with its legs cocked up
Sergei couldn’t avoid the almost touchable smell of the robber’s breath: a mixture of halitosis, stale smoke, Worcester sauce flavoured crisps (coming in waves of tiny belches), over-chewed spearmint gum and garlic. Sergei always had a good sense of smell and taste, for example he knew the difference between red and white wine without even looking at it, quite an achievement where he came from.
The smell drew a picture of the robber as a man, despite the fact that his face was covered by a long woolly hat with eyeholes, [that’s a balaclava, Sergei – but don’t worry, it’s nothing to do with the Crimean War] he was a smoker who ate junk food and failed to clean his teeth in between.
“I said, the contents of your till…” Nothing prepared Sergei for having a gun poked in his face. Because, unlike the cowardly Sergei whose body he usually occupied, this Sergei became a have-a-go hero.
The kind of citizen that you read about in the local papers (and The Sun) either collecting an award from some Mayor – or as an embarrassing school photo due to the fact that their contemporary image has had its head blown off, “…and all the fags you can carry, sunshine.”
“I don’t speak ingliss too well. Pa rooskie,” said Sergei feigning foreigness.
Ray Moore: He mixed a bowl of stuffing and he left it on the shelf…
“A roosky, from Moscock I shouldn’t wonder [that’s a reference to a 1980s Port advert – Cockburns Special Reserve – “…so I come from Moscock?” said the Russian Captain, who mispronounced Cockburns as ‘Cock Burns’ rather than ‘Co Burns’, so assumed that Moscow must be ‘Mos Cock’ in English. The British Captain replied: “Yes, you probably do…” as if everyone in the world should instantly recognise the name Cockburns as Co Burns.] well hand us all yer roubles and cigaretteskies, chum.”
For some reason, this robber’s lexicon scoured the ages, ‘chum’ being a term of endearment from the early to mid 20th Century: for example, “let’s get chummy back in the boat…” in movie depictions of Dunkirk.
“Bert vitch permp doos you needing? Comrade?” maybe Sergei was overdoing it a bit.
Ray Moore: but when he came to stuff the duck the duck had stuffed itself…
And that was the last from Mr Moore as the robber pointed his revolver at the radio and blasted.
“Look man,” said the robber, now aping the swinging ‘60s, “you comprendez vous? [sic] give me the dough!” said the robber.
“Would you like white sliced or brown? We have both…” said Sergei, edging towards the door.
Why was Sergei so determined to be a hero? It’s not as if he cared about the crappy Fuel&FagsCo organisation that employed him.
Who cared if they lost 40,000 fags and a day’s takings? Was it worth getting a bullet through the temple for? Perhaps it was the isolation. Maybe he was going do-lally, putting in so many shifts in the middle-of-nowhere service station to save up enough hard-earned to buy his chip van. Stuck in a place lacking human contact.
“Get away from that door! Get Away!” shouted the robber, making a leap past the black-and-white-chocolate-special-edition Mars Bar stand.
Sergei dived out onto the forecourt of the petrol station and grabbed a pump nozzle.
The robber reached the door and launched himself through, as Sergei lit the end of the nozzle, spraying flames and turning the robber to a charcoal crisp almost instantly.
The robber’s body crumbled onto the barbeque display next to the newspaper stand. By the way, somewhat ironically, the robber’s surname was Crisp.
The whole event had been witnessed by Geoffrey from Rainbow, who’d just arrived in his clean car, a car that contained Duggie, his mate, The cyclist and a pike sloshing around in bucket of water.
“Blimey!” said Geoffrey, stopping next to the diesel pump by mistake.
Monday, 19 April 2010
Normal Service will be resumed...
Normal Service will be resumed as soon as possible.
Imagine someone is sitting here, in black and white, making a pot out of clay.
Or that a girl is teaching a stuffed clown to write on a blackboard.
Sergei's just dealing with post-traumatic stress from his ordeal with the robber.
Isolation, Isolation. Better than desolation, I suppose.
Imagine someone is sitting here, in black and white, making a pot out of clay.
Or that a girl is teaching a stuffed clown to write on a blackboard.
Sergei's just dealing with post-traumatic stress from his ordeal with the robber.
Isolation, Isolation. Better than desolation, I suppose.
Sunday, 11 April 2010
Sergei - studying the barrel #1
He'd seen the movies. Read thrillers. Been on the New York subway of the pre-zero-tolerance 1980s (while on tour as a fledgling shot-putter for the Moscow Worldwide Comrade Sports Team). But nothing prepared Sergei for the sight of a cold gun-barrel pointing in the region of his thrid eye.
He stopped dancing, pissed himself and tried to focus somewhere in the middle distance, near the petrol-pump that said 'cards only'. He didn't want to look the robber in the eyes, following the same philosophy that urges you not to lock eyes with a wild dog.
Two things could now happen and here's the first [well, an infinite array of things really, but as a limited author, Steve has selected two. We'll play this like a movie that has an ending and an alternate ending on the DVD reissue. The first in this post the second in the next]:
Sergei was fundamentally a coward. There was no way he was going to fight to protect the takens of the blasted 'Fuel&FagsCoPetroleum', his employers and owners of this hellhole.
Not only did he hate them, he was also scared half to death. And in such times, the mind starts playing tricks.
As he stared at that middle-distant petrol pump, the screen telling the buyer how many litres he/she'd been ripped-off for turned into a miniature TV screen, flashing back through Sergei's childhood in the old USSR and his attempt to make it in the west.
What he focused on was the dream of owning a chip shop - buying a chippy and setting up in business. His Uncle Dimitri, who defected decades before the wall came down, always said, on those incognito postcards that he sent from his bedsit in Morden, Surrey (he used to describe the accomodation as "near-a the toob stayteon to geyt inta Loondon") - "Sergei, you-a moost give-a de Eengliss foood. Frie-ed food. 'itsa vart dey eeet. You wad becum ze Milly-yon-air!" He died after he was knocked off his moped while learning the cab driver's 'knowledge'. It may have been the KGB.
Sergei remembered his meeting last week (as his life flashed past him, the instant before an imagined bullet to the brain) with a guy selling a mobile chip shop, on eBay.
He made the trip over to Basildon in Essex, never been there before. The van (Buy-it-now price £2,650, with immediate £300 PayPal deposit after purchase) was parked up in the man's drive: a Transit, 'N-reg', bit of rust. The business was called "Not the Jackson Pollock's - All Cod Fish Bar", sign-written on the side of the ex-ambulance vehicle in day-glow yellow lettering, edged with silver.
"Why the Jackson Pollock?" said Sergei.
"We don't like that Pollock fish - we only use cod. It's a conspiracy thoery that fish stocks stuff. By the Icelanders, trying to put our fishermen out of business." said the fish shop seller, Benny Rubkins, "you'd know all about that stuff with the secret police and all."
Sergei didn't have a clue what he was on about.
"The beauty of this vehicle is that you've got minimal overheads. No rent, no rates. Just fill up with a bit of juice and Bob's your uncle!" said Rubkins.
"Bob's my...what?" said Sergei.
"Vladimir's your uncle - whatever. It's easy money!"
Sergei liked the idea more and more.
"And as it's an ambulance, I like the fact that we're still contributing to keeping our hospitals full. You know, bringing on ill-health all the junk food!" said Rubkins, laughing an showing off a mouth full of stained, caracked and missing teeth and a discoloured tongue. Looked alot like the average Russian, thought Sergei.
Rubkins fired up the fryers, lined up along the side of the ambulance, the entrance was at the rear, and led to a glass diplay area, just like a chippy in the High Street.
"Make up to £2,000 a week in the summer, this thing will. A couple of weeks work and it would have cost you nothing," said Rubkins, dipping a frozen fillet of cod into some pasty looking pale yellow batter before slipping into the fat where it sizzled and curled into a semi-circle.
"That's the way you want it, Serge me old mate," said Rubkins, tipping a bag of sliced potatoes into the adjacent fryer, "Let it curl up so it steams in the batter, don't want the fat to get through to the fish. Here, try out cooking the chips."
Sergei wrapped his hand round the handle of the frying basket, it wasn't like the pathetic Do-nut fryers installed at the petrol station - always spitting out molten liquid at the users, never cleaned: the weight and feel of this fryer made him feel like a man. Like a businessman. A Western businessman. "I'll take it, Mr Rubkins. Your business, I'll buy it. Full price."
"Wise decision Sergei. You won't regret it," said Rubkins and they shook on the deal. Sergei went back to the frying basket and dunked the chips into the popping fat. Yes it felt good.
When he came round, he held a ragged piece of woolly mask in his hand, above the Do-nut fryer. It was still attached to the head of the robber and somehow Sergei was dunking the head of the man into the boiling fat: in and out, in and out. His features had crisped up like a roasted chicken and he didn't seem to be breathing.
Wow, thought Serge, the power of the sub-conscious imagination, and promptly vomited over the pick and mix.
He stopped dancing, pissed himself and tried to focus somewhere in the middle distance, near the petrol-pump that said 'cards only'. He didn't want to look the robber in the eyes, following the same philosophy that urges you not to lock eyes with a wild dog.
Two things could now happen and here's the first [well, an infinite array of things really, but as a limited author, Steve has selected two. We'll play this like a movie that has an ending and an alternate ending on the DVD reissue. The first in this post the second in the next]:
Sergei was fundamentally a coward. There was no way he was going to fight to protect the takens of the blasted 'Fuel&FagsCoPetroleum', his employers and owners of this hellhole.
Not only did he hate them, he was also scared half to death. And in such times, the mind starts playing tricks.
As he stared at that middle-distant petrol pump, the screen telling the buyer how many litres he/she'd been ripped-off for turned into a miniature TV screen, flashing back through Sergei's childhood in the old USSR and his attempt to make it in the west.
What he focused on was the dream of owning a chip shop - buying a chippy and setting up in business. His Uncle Dimitri, who defected decades before the wall came down, always said, on those incognito postcards that he sent from his bedsit in Morden, Surrey (he used to describe the accomodation as "near-a the toob stayteon to geyt inta Loondon") - "Sergei, you-a moost give-a de Eengliss foood. Frie-ed food. 'itsa vart dey eeet. You wad becum ze Milly-yon-air!" He died after he was knocked off his moped while learning the cab driver's 'knowledge'. It may have been the KGB.
Sergei remembered his meeting last week (as his life flashed past him, the instant before an imagined bullet to the brain) with a guy selling a mobile chip shop, on eBay.
He made the trip over to Basildon in Essex, never been there before. The van (Buy-it-now price £2,650, with immediate £300 PayPal deposit after purchase) was parked up in the man's drive: a Transit, 'N-reg', bit of rust. The business was called "Not the Jackson Pollock's - All Cod Fish Bar", sign-written on the side of the ex-ambulance vehicle in day-glow yellow lettering, edged with silver.
"Why the Jackson Pollock?" said Sergei.
"We don't like that Pollock fish - we only use cod. It's a conspiracy thoery that fish stocks stuff. By the Icelanders, trying to put our fishermen out of business." said the fish shop seller, Benny Rubkins, "you'd know all about that stuff with the secret police and all."
Sergei didn't have a clue what he was on about.
"The beauty of this vehicle is that you've got minimal overheads. No rent, no rates. Just fill up with a bit of juice and Bob's your uncle!" said Rubkins.
"Bob's my...what?" said Sergei.
"Vladimir's your uncle - whatever. It's easy money!"
Sergei liked the idea more and more.
"And as it's an ambulance, I like the fact that we're still contributing to keeping our hospitals full. You know, bringing on ill-health all the junk food!" said Rubkins, laughing an showing off a mouth full of stained, caracked and missing teeth and a discoloured tongue. Looked alot like the average Russian, thought Sergei.
Rubkins fired up the fryers, lined up along the side of the ambulance, the entrance was at the rear, and led to a glass diplay area, just like a chippy in the High Street.
"Make up to £2,000 a week in the summer, this thing will. A couple of weeks work and it would have cost you nothing," said Rubkins, dipping a frozen fillet of cod into some pasty looking pale yellow batter before slipping into the fat where it sizzled and curled into a semi-circle.
"That's the way you want it, Serge me old mate," said Rubkins, tipping a bag of sliced potatoes into the adjacent fryer, "Let it curl up so it steams in the batter, don't want the fat to get through to the fish. Here, try out cooking the chips."
Sergei wrapped his hand round the handle of the frying basket, it wasn't like the pathetic Do-nut fryers installed at the petrol station - always spitting out molten liquid at the users, never cleaned: the weight and feel of this fryer made him feel like a man. Like a businessman. A Western businessman. "I'll take it, Mr Rubkins. Your business, I'll buy it. Full price."
"Wise decision Sergei. You won't regret it," said Rubkins and they shook on the deal. Sergei went back to the frying basket and dunked the chips into the popping fat. Yes it felt good.
When he came round, he held a ragged piece of woolly mask in his hand, above the Do-nut fryer. It was still attached to the head of the robber and somehow Sergei was dunking the head of the man into the boiling fat: in and out, in and out. His features had crisped up like a roasted chicken and he didn't seem to be breathing.
Wow, thought Serge, the power of the sub-conscious imagination, and promptly vomited over the pick and mix.
Wednesday, 7 April 2010
Sergei's dancing - to a Fall cover-version, of all things...
I don’t know where it came from, this obsession with isolation, thought Sergei.
Wherever I am I chose the option most suited to isolation.
He remembered being a guard on the Trans Siberian. Not so much a guard, although that’s what he told ‘the girls’, more a baggage handler.
“Hey. Hey Boy!” That’s what he heard, each time they stopped at a halt in some godforsaken hole, “Want to earn a rouble or two? Or you gonna sit there staring up your arse all day, huh!”
The gangsters were the worst. No respect for humankind, it was all about money. And they say the UK is a capitalist state.
So, Sergei would take the bags. Chuck them into a taxi, hopefully spilling some of the contents if he could get a zip undone.
He once found a bag of cocaine, nestling in the top of a holdall trust in his hands by the minder of one of these gangsters. Sergei managed to liberate the drugs, funding part of the next year selling small bags of coke to passengers.
Now the service station/petrol station/garage, whatever they’re called. We call them Gas stations in Russia, like the Yanks, he thought to himself.
“Gas!” said Sergei, “Gas! been-ZEEN! [that’s an approximation of the sound of the word petrol, in Russian] been-ZEEN!” and he danced around the room chanting the word, “been-ZEEN! been-ZEEN! been-ZEEN!”
Maybe that’s why he liked to be on his own. Maybe he was slightly deranged.
He danced and danced and tuned his movements into the music softly dribbling from his transistor radio: I can hear the grass grow [not the Move’s original, The Fall’s cover version]
[and here’s an aside by Duggie Chop about The Fall and cover versions…
“I’m not gonna say much now. Just this: Fall cover versions are rubbish when Brix had anything to do with ‘em, and only slightly better when she didn’t. And…”
“What about ‘Victoria’?” Said Duggie’s mate, flicking through a back issue of Mojo, the one with Kraftwerk on the front cover, “I reckon they did alright with that one. I mean, it was pretty obscure before they covered it. I think they made the charts.”
“You’re thinking of ‘Hit The North’,” said Duggie, “Ok, I’m just saying that The Fall’s cover versions are usually rubbish.”
“Why Are People Grudgeful’? ‘Lost in Music’? both from The Infotainment Scan, 1993” said Duggie’s mate.
“Yeah, but they’ve got nothing to do with Brix!” said Duggie, attempting to rescue his argument.
“Suppose so. I don’t particularly like them anyway. Much prefer The Fall’s originals. It’s good when Mark E Smith resurrects something that he was into. Might murder it, but at least people search out the original.” Said Duggie’s mate (in his mind were the four tracks from Black Monk Time by The Monks that The Fall had covered).
“I reckon Sergei’s gonna be in schtuck if we don’t shut up – look at him dancing around.” Said Duggie.
“And he doesn’t know what’s coming up either, does he?” said Duggie’s mate.
“Nah, But he soon will. Watch.” Said Duggie, fading away like a finger swish through dust on a warm CRT TV screen.]
We’re back with Sergei, swirling around and dancing, swirling and chanting. He collected the broom and he’s swinging it around like a rather thin dance partner, “been ZEEN! You are my Queen!” he said, eyes closed in a kind of ecstasy of movement.
And he would have continued all day, or at least until someone ordered petrol or fags, but his eyes opened on the barrel of a gun pointed straight at his face.
“Can I have the contents of your till please. And 40,000 cigarettes.” Said the voice behind a knitted mask.
Wherever I am I chose the option most suited to isolation.
He remembered being a guard on the Trans Siberian. Not so much a guard, although that’s what he told ‘the girls’, more a baggage handler.
“Hey. Hey Boy!” That’s what he heard, each time they stopped at a halt in some godforsaken hole, “Want to earn a rouble or two? Or you gonna sit there staring up your arse all day, huh!”
The gangsters were the worst. No respect for humankind, it was all about money. And they say the UK is a capitalist state.
So, Sergei would take the bags. Chuck them into a taxi, hopefully spilling some of the contents if he could get a zip undone.
He once found a bag of cocaine, nestling in the top of a holdall trust in his hands by the minder of one of these gangsters. Sergei managed to liberate the drugs, funding part of the next year selling small bags of coke to passengers.
Now the service station/petrol station/garage, whatever they’re called. We call them Gas stations in Russia, like the Yanks, he thought to himself.
“Gas!” said Sergei, “Gas! been-ZEEN! [that’s an approximation of the sound of the word petrol, in Russian] been-ZEEN!” and he danced around the room chanting the word, “been-ZEEN! been-ZEEN! been-ZEEN!”
Maybe that’s why he liked to be on his own. Maybe he was slightly deranged.
He danced and danced and tuned his movements into the music softly dribbling from his transistor radio: I can hear the grass grow [not the Move’s original, The Fall’s cover version]
[and here’s an aside by Duggie Chop about The Fall and cover versions…
“I’m not gonna say much now. Just this: Fall cover versions are rubbish when Brix had anything to do with ‘em, and only slightly better when she didn’t. And…”
“What about ‘Victoria’?” Said Duggie’s mate, flicking through a back issue of Mojo, the one with Kraftwerk on the front cover, “I reckon they did alright with that one. I mean, it was pretty obscure before they covered it. I think they made the charts.”
“You’re thinking of ‘Hit The North’,” said Duggie, “Ok, I’m just saying that The Fall’s cover versions are usually rubbish.”
“Why Are People Grudgeful’? ‘Lost in Music’? both from The Infotainment Scan, 1993” said Duggie’s mate.
“Yeah, but they’ve got nothing to do with Brix!” said Duggie, attempting to rescue his argument.
“Suppose so. I don’t particularly like them anyway. Much prefer The Fall’s originals. It’s good when Mark E Smith resurrects something that he was into. Might murder it, but at least people search out the original.” Said Duggie’s mate (in his mind were the four tracks from Black Monk Time by The Monks that The Fall had covered).
“I reckon Sergei’s gonna be in schtuck if we don’t shut up – look at him dancing around.” Said Duggie.
“And he doesn’t know what’s coming up either, does he?” said Duggie’s mate.
“Nah, But he soon will. Watch.” Said Duggie, fading away like a finger swish through dust on a warm CRT TV screen.]
We’re back with Sergei, swirling around and dancing, swirling and chanting. He collected the broom and he’s swinging it around like a rather thin dance partner, “been ZEEN! You are my Queen!” he said, eyes closed in a kind of ecstasy of movement.
And he would have continued all day, or at least until someone ordered petrol or fags, but his eyes opened on the barrel of a gun pointed straight at his face.
“Can I have the contents of your till please. And 40,000 cigarettes.” Said the voice behind a knitted mask.
Monday, 29 March 2010
Sergei - a study of isolation
Imagine yourself as a drawing, the light scrub of a pencil tip on paper. Shaded, but easy to erase.
[That's just one of the thoughts floating through Sergei's mind as he stares at a yellow street lamp alongside the 'A' road passing the service station where he works.]
From a small building in the middle of nowhere. Sergei stares at that single point in space, just beyond the double strength security glass of the window, for a second too long and burns the image of nothingness into his retina.
"But it must be something," he thinks, rustling the foil wrapper of a Twix bar on display, fondling the lengths of chocolate-coated biscuit and blinking away the flash of light that blotted out his vision.
[What he didn't see was the trace in time of a lager bubble, falling through space 28 years ago. But that's another story]
He shook his head as someone entered the shop, saying, automatically: "Can you tell me which pump" But his sub-conscious changed the phrase as he was addressing an attractive woman to: "Can you tell me, any chance of a hump?"
"What!" came the reply in a broad Dartford accent, "Any chance of a what!"
"The pump, the pump," said Sergei, crushing the Twix bar, "can you tell me which?"
That's what comes of spending so much time on your own in a godforsaken hole like a service station off the A211. I mean, where is this place? There's no town nearby, no other shops, no people, no pubs, just...
"'scuse me," said the Dartford woman, pouting bright red lipstick, "are you listening to me? Pump 13. Oh, and a packet of Bensons. I don't want that Twix, though."
"I'm sorry, just thinking about Mother Russia, my mind goes blank sometimes," said Sergei.
"What's that about your mother?" said the woman, unwrapping the cigarettes and lighting one, "You're strange [takes in a breath of smoke] different [blows it in Sergei's direction]."
"You're not supposed to smoke in here," said Sergei.
"Where should I go then?" said the woman.
And that's how Sergei ended up in the stinky toilet behind the service station, near the Calor gas canisters, a rare closed sign on the front door of the 24-hr service station and a blonde bouncing around on top of him, rising and falling at a steady rhythm, his face and other parts smothered with red lipstick. Maybe working in such a lonely place had it's benefits after all.
"I never did pay you for that petrol," said the woman, inhaling another Benson and letting the smoke curl round her lips.
"Don't worry about it, I pick up the tab," said Sergei.
She turned to Sergei and gave him the kind of hard stare that Paddington Bear would have been proud of, "Not on your nelly, mate! What do you take me for? A prozzy or somthink?" she said.
[I must point out that it's now 3am. Sergei's on the night shift. The graveyard shift in this out of the way place, the wrong side of a major road.]
Behind the till, the telephone is ringing. It's the area manager. He's had a report that a closed sign has been seen on the front door of 'Gable Dongle' [that's the name of Sergei's service station]. Sergei pushes past the girl, singeing his trousers on the tip of her fag, and collects the receiver.
Can he explain the closed sign?
"Well, I heard something, out on the forecourt. Turned out to be a hedgehog. I followed it round the back to the Calor gas cage," said Sergei.
Hedgehog? What?
"I gave him some milk," said Sergei.
You what? That's coming out of your wages, my son!
Sergei replaced the receiver, shaking his head. He was saving up. Working hard. He had a plan. A vision. A chip shop in a small town. He'd done his research.
"You coming back, Sergei?" It was Donna from Dartford.
"Yes," said Sergei, "my hedgehog needs a little more milk."
Now it was Donna's turn to shake her head, "Yes, Sergei, you're strange. Different."
[That's just one of the thoughts floating through Sergei's mind as he stares at a yellow street lamp alongside the 'A' road passing the service station where he works.]
From a small building in the middle of nowhere. Sergei stares at that single point in space, just beyond the double strength security glass of the window, for a second too long and burns the image of nothingness into his retina.
"But it must be something," he thinks, rustling the foil wrapper of a Twix bar on display, fondling the lengths of chocolate-coated biscuit and blinking away the flash of light that blotted out his vision.
[What he didn't see was the trace in time of a lager bubble, falling through space 28 years ago. But that's another story]
He shook his head as someone entered the shop, saying, automatically: "Can you tell me which pump" But his sub-conscious changed the phrase as he was addressing an attractive woman to: "Can you tell me, any chance of a hump?"
"What!" came the reply in a broad Dartford accent, "Any chance of a what!"
"The pump, the pump," said Sergei, crushing the Twix bar, "can you tell me which?"
That's what comes of spending so much time on your own in a godforsaken hole like a service station off the A211. I mean, where is this place? There's no town nearby, no other shops, no people, no pubs, just...
"'scuse me," said the Dartford woman, pouting bright red lipstick, "are you listening to me? Pump 13. Oh, and a packet of Bensons. I don't want that Twix, though."
"I'm sorry, just thinking about Mother Russia, my mind goes blank sometimes," said Sergei.
"What's that about your mother?" said the woman, unwrapping the cigarettes and lighting one, "You're strange [takes in a breath of smoke] different [blows it in Sergei's direction]."
"You're not supposed to smoke in here," said Sergei.
"Where should I go then?" said the woman.
And that's how Sergei ended up in the stinky toilet behind the service station, near the Calor gas canisters, a rare closed sign on the front door of the 24-hr service station and a blonde bouncing around on top of him, rising and falling at a steady rhythm, his face and other parts smothered with red lipstick. Maybe working in such a lonely place had it's benefits after all.
"I never did pay you for that petrol," said the woman, inhaling another Benson and letting the smoke curl round her lips.
"Don't worry about it, I pick up the tab," said Sergei.
She turned to Sergei and gave him the kind of hard stare that Paddington Bear would have been proud of, "Not on your nelly, mate! What do you take me for? A prozzy or somthink?" she said.
[I must point out that it's now 3am. Sergei's on the night shift. The graveyard shift in this out of the way place, the wrong side of a major road.]
Behind the till, the telephone is ringing. It's the area manager. He's had a report that a closed sign has been seen on the front door of 'Gable Dongle' [that's the name of Sergei's service station]. Sergei pushes past the girl, singeing his trousers on the tip of her fag, and collects the receiver.
Can he explain the closed sign?
"Well, I heard something, out on the forecourt. Turned out to be a hedgehog. I followed it round the back to the Calor gas cage," said Sergei.
Hedgehog? What?
"I gave him some milk," said Sergei.
You what? That's coming out of your wages, my son!
Sergei replaced the receiver, shaking his head. He was saving up. Working hard. He had a plan. A vision. A chip shop in a small town. He'd done his research.
"You coming back, Sergei?" It was Donna from Dartford.
"Yes," said Sergei, "my hedgehog needs a little more milk."
Now it was Donna's turn to shake her head, "Yes, Sergei, you're strange. Different."
Monday, 22 March 2010
Something of an interlude: The Cyclist gets philosophical
[this is face on - from the third eye of the cyclist, way up inside his forehead...]
Apart from the fact that I've floated around in a lager bubble for the past few days, passing through time zones and vortices, it has to be said that I've been floating around in a lager-induced bubble for even longer.
Cycling is a way to get from one drinking zone, to another. Without getting busted.
I met up with the freaks at the canal - who are they, Duggie Chop and his mate. We kind of gelled. But they're regular guys. It's me that's the freak in all honesty.
I haven't faced up to it, yet, but I'm, kind of, in denial. In denial of what? Of being an adult.
I haven't walked shoulder to shoulder with anyone. Not recently. I think back to me Nan. She understood me. I remember, we was walking down the street on a summers day. About 20 years ago. I was a teenager, 15 years old probably. So I was still living at home, at school and the like.
So, me and me Nan was walking down the street, the one that runs parallel with Carnegie Road, the one with the new shopping centre these days. And me Nan say's Colm (cos that's me name, I'm not actually called The Cyclist), "you've got such broad shoulders", and she patted me on the back, "and you're gonna make some girl proud, you know. Ah yes."
She really thought I could do anything. I think I was her favourite. When I left home she sent me a note setting the record straight about life and what was in store for me; the ups and the downs. She used to listen to the crap songs I wrote on me little Casio keyboard. She thought I was a great artist.
"Colm," she said, "you'll make something of your life. You won't be the kind to turn around aged 35 and regret not making it."
Then, all of a sudden, I was 35 and on the dole. Me Nan had passed on. But I still hold the image of her, turning to me on that warm, sunny day and patting me on the back.
I got hold of a bike, second hand, and filled up a bag with tins of Red Stripe. And that's me.
When we become adults, you know, we continue to disappoint: both ourselves and those around us.
The moments of being like a 'little emperor' in your home are short. But you never believe it when you're a kid.
[And after that, he came back into the real world with the others gawping at Geoffrey from Rainbow's face. It was still 1982 (this is the real world!) and maybe The Cyclist would, eventually, seek out his Nan...maybe he'd straighten out his life, but who knows.]
Apart from the fact that I've floated around in a lager bubble for the past few days, passing through time zones and vortices, it has to be said that I've been floating around in a lager-induced bubble for even longer.
Cycling is a way to get from one drinking zone, to another. Without getting busted.
I met up with the freaks at the canal - who are they, Duggie Chop and his mate. We kind of gelled. But they're regular guys. It's me that's the freak in all honesty.
I haven't faced up to it, yet, but I'm, kind of, in denial. In denial of what? Of being an adult.
I haven't walked shoulder to shoulder with anyone. Not recently. I think back to me Nan. She understood me. I remember, we was walking down the street on a summers day. About 20 years ago. I was a teenager, 15 years old probably. So I was still living at home, at school and the like.
So, me and me Nan was walking down the street, the one that runs parallel with Carnegie Road, the one with the new shopping centre these days. And me Nan say's Colm (cos that's me name, I'm not actually called The Cyclist), "you've got such broad shoulders", and she patted me on the back, "and you're gonna make some girl proud, you know. Ah yes."
She really thought I could do anything. I think I was her favourite. When I left home she sent me a note setting the record straight about life and what was in store for me; the ups and the downs. She used to listen to the crap songs I wrote on me little Casio keyboard. She thought I was a great artist.
"Colm," she said, "you'll make something of your life. You won't be the kind to turn around aged 35 and regret not making it."
Then, all of a sudden, I was 35 and on the dole. Me Nan had passed on. But I still hold the image of her, turning to me on that warm, sunny day and patting me on the back.
I got hold of a bike, second hand, and filled up a bag with tins of Red Stripe. And that's me.
When we become adults, you know, we continue to disappoint: both ourselves and those around us.
The moments of being like a 'little emperor' in your home are short. But you never believe it when you're a kid.
[And after that, he came back into the real world with the others gawping at Geoffrey from Rainbow's face. It was still 1982 (this is the real world!) and maybe The Cyclist would, eventually, seek out his Nan...maybe he'd straighten out his life, but who knows.]
Thursday, 11 March 2010
The Bubble Explodes!
The story continues…
In the distance: a man washing his car. Pike, submerged in a polythene vat of lager, saw it first.
Pike couldn’t communicate the fact that he’d seen the future - life in collision with a bucket of soapy water that was being sloshed over the bonnet of an ‘X’-plate Renault 18 (resplendent in a kind of burnt amber metallic coachwork). [Like I say, he was in a flaming vat of lager! And he’s only a fish!]
[Note: “In this case, the future is the past,” so says Dr. Wagner, a time specialist. He continues: “At this moment, life in the lager bubble is floating towards the past, towards 1982. And yet, the past is being experienced as the present by the travellers.
Now, Mr Pike, if I may call him Mr Pike, can see the future: the collision with the bubble of lager and the soap bubbles. But, that future, by the nature of time travel, is in the past. 1982. And it is, therefore, the relative past of our journeying friends in the bubble: Duggie and his mate, the Cyclist and Mr Pike.
So, the question is: what constitutes the future, when the future is - relatively or otherwise – the past? And, if they are travelling towards the past are their body-clocks running backwards, like the analogue odometer of a car in reverse? Thus, are the compatriots actually getting younger? And so…]
“’E’s making a lot of bubbles, that Pike,” said Duggie, “it’s like he’s trying to tell us something.”
“Like Lassie, you mean?” said the cyclist.
“Yeah, only he’s not as strokable,” said Duggie.
[Just then, a huge orb rose up towards the floating bubble, transporting their orangey-yellow, lager-tinted world through the rainbow of a prism that slithered like a film of oil.
Then the lager bubble and the orb - a soap sud, in actual fact - plopped together and stuck like mating cray flies. And as it joined them, the oily-prism-rainbow burst the lager bubble and the soap-sud-bubble-rainbow-prism-oilyness became their reality. Their new world.]
(“Up above the streets and houses, rainbow flying high…everyone can see it smiling, over the sky” the soundtrack was in their minds)
The sheer weight of the soap bubble with the four ‘friends’ inside [“Hey!” said Pike, “don’t forget – I’m a victim here! Not a friend!” Ok, ok, that’s why I put inverted commas round the word friends says Steve.] makes the bubble stop rising and drop like a rock towards the sudsy bucket.
“I knew it!” gurgled the Pike. No one heard him.
“We’re dropping too fast – too fast!” said Duggie’s mate, slipping and sliding like Buster Keaton on marbles.
When they hit the bucket of soapy water, Apollo 11 stylee, the bubble exploded and merged with the rest of the suds.
It was catastrophic for our heroes, who, as if by magic, became full-sized, splitting the bucket into a prosthetic spring flower - the sides splayed out flat and white against a grey, car-bubble-water-wet tarmac – covered by the sprawling figures of Duggie, his mate, the cyclist and the pike…
Dazed for a moment, they opened their eyes simultaneously [except the Pike, whose eyes couldn’t close], and looked into the silhouetted face of Geoffrey from Rainbow, who’d been washing his new car. “What the…” he said.
In the distance: a man washing his car. Pike, submerged in a polythene vat of lager, saw it first.
Pike couldn’t communicate the fact that he’d seen the future - life in collision with a bucket of soapy water that was being sloshed over the bonnet of an ‘X’-plate Renault 18 (resplendent in a kind of burnt amber metallic coachwork). [Like I say, he was in a flaming vat of lager! And he’s only a fish!]
[Note: “In this case, the future is the past,” so says Dr. Wagner, a time specialist. He continues: “At this moment, life in the lager bubble is floating towards the past, towards 1982. And yet, the past is being experienced as the present by the travellers.
Now, Mr Pike, if I may call him Mr Pike, can see the future: the collision with the bubble of lager and the soap bubbles. But, that future, by the nature of time travel, is in the past. 1982. And it is, therefore, the relative past of our journeying friends in the bubble: Duggie and his mate, the Cyclist and Mr Pike.
So, the question is: what constitutes the future, when the future is - relatively or otherwise – the past? And, if they are travelling towards the past are their body-clocks running backwards, like the analogue odometer of a car in reverse? Thus, are the compatriots actually getting younger? And so…]
“’E’s making a lot of bubbles, that Pike,” said Duggie, “it’s like he’s trying to tell us something.”
“Like Lassie, you mean?” said the cyclist.
“Yeah, only he’s not as strokable,” said Duggie.
[Just then, a huge orb rose up towards the floating bubble, transporting their orangey-yellow, lager-tinted world through the rainbow of a prism that slithered like a film of oil.
Then the lager bubble and the orb - a soap sud, in actual fact - plopped together and stuck like mating cray flies. And as it joined them, the oily-prism-rainbow burst the lager bubble and the soap-sud-bubble-rainbow-prism-oilyness became their reality. Their new world.]
(“Up above the streets and houses, rainbow flying high…everyone can see it smiling, over the sky” the soundtrack was in their minds)
The sheer weight of the soap bubble with the four ‘friends’ inside [“Hey!” said Pike, “don’t forget – I’m a victim here! Not a friend!” Ok, ok, that’s why I put inverted commas round the word friends says Steve.] makes the bubble stop rising and drop like a rock towards the sudsy bucket.
“I knew it!” gurgled the Pike. No one heard him.
“We’re dropping too fast – too fast!” said Duggie’s mate, slipping and sliding like Buster Keaton on marbles.
When they hit the bucket of soapy water, Apollo 11 stylee, the bubble exploded and merged with the rest of the suds.
It was catastrophic for our heroes, who, as if by magic, became full-sized, splitting the bucket into a prosthetic spring flower - the sides splayed out flat and white against a grey, car-bubble-water-wet tarmac – covered by the sprawling figures of Duggie, his mate, the cyclist and the pike…
Dazed for a moment, they opened their eyes simultaneously [except the Pike, whose eyes couldn’t close], and looked into the silhouetted face of Geoffrey from Rainbow, who’d been washing his new car. “What the…” he said.
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Interlude: Flight of the Bubble – (and ‘Flying’ by The Beatles) [NOTE: No Pikes were harmed in the scribbling of this drivel].
[‘Flying’ from The Beatles’s ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ is playing in the ethereal background as the lager bubble, containing our heroes - plus the cyclist and a 20lb pike, floats to another era. Inside the bubble, each of them is floating around in a weightless atmosphere. Just like the spacemen from Apollo, well Apollo anything really…]
“Being in here, listening to ‘Flying’, floating around, kind of reminds me of the ‘Space Bouncer’ that we used to get excited about when we were kids and came to the seaside,” said Duggie’s mate.
“What, you mean that orange and white sort of enclosed-bouncy-castle thing that they set up on the beach?” said Duggie.
“Yeah, you me and my cousins jumped about in that thing for hours until our feet were black (because you weren’t allowed shoes and socks in there)” said his mate, “and we were red and sweaty and ready for an ice cream.”
“I remember thinking about that bloody thing as soon as we hit the motorway on our way down – literally 5 minutes from home,” said Duggie.
“But you’d already polished off the sarnies by then…” said Duggie’s mate, completing a back-flip, just like disco dancer used to in the ‘70s, only they had gravity to contend with.
“Why didn’t it float away,” said the cyclist, attempting to slurp a line of Red Stripe that was floating past, he missed, “I mean, it was on the beach, that bouncy thing, so why didn’t it just float away? What did they tie it to?”
“I don’t know,” said Duggie’s mate, “that’s a really good question.”
“I really dig flying,” said Duggie, “one of my favourite Beatles tunes as it goes. I love the funky, twugging bassline…”
“Twugging?” said Duggie’s mate and the cyclist in unison.
[…gasping for oxygen] “Hey, you guys! Are you nuts?” It was the pike.
“Yeah, twugging,” said Duggie, “that kind of blobby late-‘60s, high-up-in-the-mix bass sound.”
“They used to use ‘Flying’ all the time on the telly, like when there was a documentary with hot-air balloons in it,” said the cyclist.
“I don’t remember many documentaries featuring hot-air balloons,” said Duggie, “I remember that Nimble bread advert, but that used different music.”
[…sound of heavy gill-movement] “Hey! I’m drowning here!” gasped the pike, “stop talking rubbish about music and GIVE ME SOME WATER!”
Duggie turned and gave the pike a Paddington Bear-like hard stare: “Listen, mate,” said Duggie, looking straight down his own arm as the pike was still attached to his fishing line, “this is ‘Me and Duggie Chop Talk Music’ you know. It’s kinda what we do here: talk crap about tunes we like.”
Duggie continued: “Before I was interrupted by our fishy friend, I’m also into the ‘stylophone-esque’ keyboard tone and the ‘la, la, la, la, la chorus on Flying.”
“And it’s only about a minute and a half long, amazing,” added Duggie’s mate.
Meanwhile, the cyclist was emptying the contents of a six-pack of 500ml cans of Red Stripe into a fold-up camping-style water-butt that he’d just pulled out of his rucksack, “Bung the bugger in there,” he said, belching, “that’ll sort him out.”
[So, Duggie, his mate, the cyclist and a soon-to-be drunk pike continued on their journey to 1982. Who’d have thought that you could ‘boldly go’ (that’s a reference to Star Trek rather than an unintentional split-infinitive) so far in a bubble of lager? And they say there’s no chemicals in it…]
“Don’t forget,” said Duggie’s mate, as the bubble floated out of sight, “the Walrus was Paul.”
“Being in here, listening to ‘Flying’, floating around, kind of reminds me of the ‘Space Bouncer’ that we used to get excited about when we were kids and came to the seaside,” said Duggie’s mate.
“What, you mean that orange and white sort of enclosed-bouncy-castle thing that they set up on the beach?” said Duggie.
“Yeah, you me and my cousins jumped about in that thing for hours until our feet were black (because you weren’t allowed shoes and socks in there)” said his mate, “and we were red and sweaty and ready for an ice cream.”
“I remember thinking about that bloody thing as soon as we hit the motorway on our way down – literally 5 minutes from home,” said Duggie.
“But you’d already polished off the sarnies by then…” said Duggie’s mate, completing a back-flip, just like disco dancer used to in the ‘70s, only they had gravity to contend with.
“Why didn’t it float away,” said the cyclist, attempting to slurp a line of Red Stripe that was floating past, he missed, “I mean, it was on the beach, that bouncy thing, so why didn’t it just float away? What did they tie it to?”
“I don’t know,” said Duggie’s mate, “that’s a really good question.”
“I really dig flying,” said Duggie, “one of my favourite Beatles tunes as it goes. I love the funky, twugging bassline…”
“Twugging?” said Duggie’s mate and the cyclist in unison.
[…gasping for oxygen] “Hey, you guys! Are you nuts?” It was the pike.
“Yeah, twugging,” said Duggie, “that kind of blobby late-‘60s, high-up-in-the-mix bass sound.”
“They used to use ‘Flying’ all the time on the telly, like when there was a documentary with hot-air balloons in it,” said the cyclist.
“I don’t remember many documentaries featuring hot-air balloons,” said Duggie, “I remember that Nimble bread advert, but that used different music.”
[…sound of heavy gill-movement] “Hey! I’m drowning here!” gasped the pike, “stop talking rubbish about music and GIVE ME SOME WATER!”
Duggie turned and gave the pike a Paddington Bear-like hard stare: “Listen, mate,” said Duggie, looking straight down his own arm as the pike was still attached to his fishing line, “this is ‘Me and Duggie Chop Talk Music’ you know. It’s kinda what we do here: talk crap about tunes we like.”
Duggie continued: “Before I was interrupted by our fishy friend, I’m also into the ‘stylophone-esque’ keyboard tone and the ‘la, la, la, la, la chorus on Flying.”
“And it’s only about a minute and a half long, amazing,” added Duggie’s mate.
Meanwhile, the cyclist was emptying the contents of a six-pack of 500ml cans of Red Stripe into a fold-up camping-style water-butt that he’d just pulled out of his rucksack, “Bung the bugger in there,” he said, belching, “that’ll sort him out.”
[So, Duggie, his mate, the cyclist and a soon-to-be drunk pike continued on their journey to 1982. Who’d have thought that you could ‘boldly go’ (that’s a reference to Star Trek rather than an unintentional split-infinitive) so far in a bubble of lager? And they say there’s no chemicals in it…]
“Don’t forget,” said Duggie’s mate, as the bubble floated out of sight, “the Walrus was Paul.”
Friday, 26 February 2010
The Bubbles Are Rising - Duggie and his mate on Iron Maiden, Iron Maiden (1980), Pikes, Pies and Red Stripe.
“The bubbles are rising, all golden and twirly and popping at the top of the glass. It’s given me an idea” says a random Lager drinker, who just happens to be using my web-surfing credits at the Cyber Café, as I nip round the back for a leak.
“If it was up to me,” says Lager man – who can now have square brackets ‘[…]’ (like those? – YES!)
[If it was up to me, I’d grab those poor sods from 1982 (that’s Duggie Chop and his mate) cos they’ve been stuck in that room with them musos breathing in 'Bob Hope' for too damn long. I’m gonna take ‘em back to the river (canal) bank, man! – hey…where am I going…AHHHH. (he becomes a cyclist)]
“As the sun sets, the sky is like a blank canvas, especially in February,” said Duggie’s mate, watching Duggie fiddle with his rod.
“You been reading poetry again?” said Duggie and he pricked his finger on a hook.
“No, not today. But look Dug. It’s like cracked ice on top of liquid Turkish Delight, that sky. Surrounded by peach melba and touched up with crushed Parma Violets,” said his mate.
Duggie added, shaking his head: “don’t forget the Corporation-grit-grey, I can see titillations of that up there, you soft get!”
Duggie went back to the canal edge and cast his bait into the middle of the water. Live bait. He was after the pike: “I’m gonna get that bugger!”
“Especially after what he did to poor old Mr Stickleback – scared him half to death,” said Duggie’s mate.
“Needs taking down a peg or two,” said Duggie.
What’s the underwater equivalent of a peg?” said Duggie’s mate.
[Mr Stickleback: “There isn’t one! We don’t have clothes lines or noses!”]
A guy cycled past with a retro-spec ‘ghetto-blaster’ strapped to the back of his bike, blaring out ‘old-skool’ Heavy Metal [actually, Maiden were at the forefront of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal back in the day]: Iron Maiden’s eponymous first album.
“Hey, Paul Di’anno on vocals, he was the greatest singer Maiden had, wasn’t he?” said Duggie.
“Get outta here!” said Duggie’s mate, “the greatest if Maiden had wanted to stay a pub band, or touring with the likes of ‘Saxon’ forever.”
“A bit strong,” said Duggie, “but I know where you’re coming from: Brucie had a bit more ambition .”
“And a bit less booze,” said the cyclist, who’d decided to hang out with the guys and threw them each a luke-warm can of Red Stripe.
“I always think of Lucozade when I hear that opening riff to Phantom Of The Opera on that album,” said Duggie’s mate, ”remember they used it in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LtaD63zYoQ. Something like a set of traffic lights change or a runner runs around a track or something…”
“Nah. They used Running Free [also from Iron Maiden, Iron Maiden] for the ad with the runner,” said the cyclist, sneezing a stream of lager though his left nostril.
“Got me into ‘prog’ that did,” said Duggie.
“What lucozade?” said his mate.
“No, Phantom Of The Opera,” said Duggie, easing his fishing line a little, so the bait wiggled. Just to tantalise that big fat pike, “all those time changes and guitar sections. Like a bloody opera. Di’anno sounds great on that track. In fact, I’m gonna stand by this: Di’anno sounds better on all pre-Bruce Dickinson tracks than Brucie does when he tries ‘em.” Duggie cracked open his Red Stripe, spraying lager over the cyclist’s rucksack.
“There’s something in that,” said the Cyclist, sucking the dregs out of his can and opening another.
Duggie’s mate was fiddling with a jammed ring pull on his can while he spoke: “I like the way Di’anno does Remember Tomorrow. He was a better ballad singer than the ‘Air-Raid Siren’ [Bruce Dickinson’s old nickname].
Duggie bit into a warm pie. “Cover was great,” he said, “a punk Eddie, just starting out. A sneering smile, leather jacket, spiked hair and all. A Derek Riggs classic.”
“I like the back cover, too,” said Duggie’s mate, still no closer to opening his Red Stripe, though he tried, “such a simple stage backdrop, tht silver Eddie head with smoke coming out of it, behind Clive Burr…”
“Now he really was the best. Best Drummer they ever had,” said the cyclist. The other two nodded, while eating their pies.
“Amazing how the Iron Maiden stage show got so big. I mean by 1985, they had hundreds of ‘arctics’ circumnavigating the globe. Says so in the ‘Live After Death’ album.” Said Duggie’s mate.
But the other two were looking at the canal. Duggie’s float was bobbing like crazy.
“It’s the pike!” said Duggie, “I’ve got him!”
“Be great to see that monster,” said the cyclist, “he’s legendary. Once ate a puppy. No word of a lie.”
Duggie’s mate was still flicking his ring-pull, the salt from his pie was making even a warm lager seem inviting, but it just would not open.
“Wow!” said Duggie as he pulled his line, “look at the size of his snout!”
“Like a bleedin’ duck-billed platypus or something,” said the cyclist, “and look how he’s snapping! The worm didn’t stand a chance.”
“Worm?” said Duggie, “I put a bloody mouse on there!”
Just then, Duggie’s mate’s can of Red Stripe exploded into a huge fountain of golden bubbles.
One bubble grew to the size of an elevator and before Duggie’s mate could warn the other two - and the pike - they were all inside the bubble and drifting upwards.
Upwards and on their way back to 1982. Duggie, his mate, the cyclist. And the Pike.
“If it was up to me,” says Lager man – who can now have square brackets ‘[…]’ (like those? – YES!)
[If it was up to me, I’d grab those poor sods from 1982 (that’s Duggie Chop and his mate) cos they’ve been stuck in that room with them musos breathing in 'Bob Hope' for too damn long. I’m gonna take ‘em back to the river (canal) bank, man! – hey…where am I going…AHHHH. (he becomes a cyclist)]
“As the sun sets, the sky is like a blank canvas, especially in February,” said Duggie’s mate, watching Duggie fiddle with his rod.
“You been reading poetry again?” said Duggie and he pricked his finger on a hook.
“No, not today. But look Dug. It’s like cracked ice on top of liquid Turkish Delight, that sky. Surrounded by peach melba and touched up with crushed Parma Violets,” said his mate.
Duggie added, shaking his head: “don’t forget the Corporation-grit-grey, I can see titillations of that up there, you soft get!”
Duggie went back to the canal edge and cast his bait into the middle of the water. Live bait. He was after the pike: “I’m gonna get that bugger!”
“Especially after what he did to poor old Mr Stickleback – scared him half to death,” said Duggie’s mate.
“Needs taking down a peg or two,” said Duggie.
What’s the underwater equivalent of a peg?” said Duggie’s mate.
[Mr Stickleback: “There isn’t one! We don’t have clothes lines or noses!”]
A guy cycled past with a retro-spec ‘ghetto-blaster’ strapped to the back of his bike, blaring out ‘old-skool’ Heavy Metal [actually, Maiden were at the forefront of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal back in the day]: Iron Maiden’s eponymous first album.
“Hey, Paul Di’anno on vocals, he was the greatest singer Maiden had, wasn’t he?” said Duggie.
“Get outta here!” said Duggie’s mate, “the greatest if Maiden had wanted to stay a pub band, or touring with the likes of ‘Saxon’ forever.”
“A bit strong,” said Duggie, “but I know where you’re coming from: Brucie had a bit more ambition .”
“And a bit less booze,” said the cyclist, who’d decided to hang out with the guys and threw them each a luke-warm can of Red Stripe.
“I always think of Lucozade when I hear that opening riff to Phantom Of The Opera on that album,” said Duggie’s mate, ”remember they used it in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LtaD63zYoQ. Something like a set of traffic lights change or a runner runs around a track or something…”
“Nah. They used Running Free [also from Iron Maiden, Iron Maiden] for the ad with the runner,” said the cyclist, sneezing a stream of lager though his left nostril.
“Got me into ‘prog’ that did,” said Duggie.
“What lucozade?” said his mate.
“No, Phantom Of The Opera,” said Duggie, easing his fishing line a little, so the bait wiggled. Just to tantalise that big fat pike, “all those time changes and guitar sections. Like a bloody opera. Di’anno sounds great on that track. In fact, I’m gonna stand by this: Di’anno sounds better on all pre-Bruce Dickinson tracks than Brucie does when he tries ‘em.” Duggie cracked open his Red Stripe, spraying lager over the cyclist’s rucksack.
“There’s something in that,” said the Cyclist, sucking the dregs out of his can and opening another.
Duggie’s mate was fiddling with a jammed ring pull on his can while he spoke: “I like the way Di’anno does Remember Tomorrow. He was a better ballad singer than the ‘Air-Raid Siren’ [Bruce Dickinson’s old nickname].
Duggie bit into a warm pie. “Cover was great,” he said, “a punk Eddie, just starting out. A sneering smile, leather jacket, spiked hair and all. A Derek Riggs classic.”
“I like the back cover, too,” said Duggie’s mate, still no closer to opening his Red Stripe, though he tried, “such a simple stage backdrop, tht silver Eddie head with smoke coming out of it, behind Clive Burr…”
“Now he really was the best. Best Drummer they ever had,” said the cyclist. The other two nodded, while eating their pies.
“Amazing how the Iron Maiden stage show got so big. I mean by 1985, they had hundreds of ‘arctics’ circumnavigating the globe. Says so in the ‘Live After Death’ album.” Said Duggie’s mate.
But the other two were looking at the canal. Duggie’s float was bobbing like crazy.
“It’s the pike!” said Duggie, “I’ve got him!”
“Be great to see that monster,” said the cyclist, “he’s legendary. Once ate a puppy. No word of a lie.”
Duggie’s mate was still flicking his ring-pull, the salt from his pie was making even a warm lager seem inviting, but it just would not open.
“Wow!” said Duggie as he pulled his line, “look at the size of his snout!”
“Like a bleedin’ duck-billed platypus or something,” said the cyclist, “and look how he’s snapping! The worm didn’t stand a chance.”
“Worm?” said Duggie, “I put a bloody mouse on there!”
Just then, Duggie’s mate’s can of Red Stripe exploded into a huge fountain of golden bubbles.
One bubble grew to the size of an elevator and before Duggie’s mate could warn the other two - and the pike - they were all inside the bubble and drifting upwards.
Upwards and on their way back to 1982. Duggie, his mate, the cyclist. And the Pike.
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Can you take the past seriously - when you've been there recently?
Spending time with your heroes. [Duggie Chop being philosophical]
About as natural as spreading honey on a smear of excrement.
And the way Matt [that’s Matt Score from Hair Tom – look at the earlier posts for info. Go on! You know you want to!] – sky high on Coca-Cola – was looking at the pair of us as if we were a sample of the honey and crap mix, residing on the sole of his Hush Puppy.
The other thing is, travelling back in time, you know, you’re never really there. [again, look it up, Duggie and his mate were back in 1982, or have been for a while now…] It’s like you’re always comparing things. Technology, the fact people can and do smoke anywhere, old cars that look new, fashions.
1982. Not just the year good taste forgot (I realise people were still tainted by the ‘70s until about 1985). 1982 is the year people have forgotten [Steve Hill obviously hasn’t, he writes this garbage] except for The Falklands.
Mainstream music was pants - nothing new there – telly was a pale imitation of life, except Minder, on three, soon to be four channels.
Start of Channel 4 [looking through Duggie’s eyes at his boring upbringing]
Duggie remembers the start of Channel 4 really well.
It was an exciting innovation. It sticks in Duggie’s mind because he had to fix a puncture on is bike - fast – so he didn’t miss the first edition of ‘Countdown’ ever broadcast.
Winter. A dark afternoon. Duggie sat in his parent’s front-room (“it was a front room, too,” says Duggie, “before they built the extension round the back of the house and moved the room there. I saw Tommy Cooper peg-out in the same room.”) he was wearing a baggy green, hand-knitted jumper. His fingers were caked in bike grease as he watched the new future unfold.
(“Early C4 was strange, the shows had no atmosphere, like fresh plaster drying in an unpainted new-build dining room”, says Duggie).
Once you’d been in the future and were a backward moving time-traveller, you couldn’t sit there like Duggie did that day in his parents front room, fingers smelling of rubber from his new inner-tube.
Channel Four travelled a timeline from showing unseen-for-years classic ‘60s films, like ‘Billy Liar’ and ‘Georgie Girl’ and resurrecting The Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan and Man About The House, to wading through the cess-pool of ‘reality TV’ and Property shows.
And TV went from something to catch – or you missed it – unless you had a £400 VHS recorder, to something to sample or discard at your own leisure, using iPlayer, DVD and Sky boxes.
“Duggie!” said Duggie’s mum, “your dinner’s ready. You want it in the front-room, so you can watch the new telly thingy?”
“Yes, Mum. What we got?” he said, picking some black muck from under his fingernails with his front teeth.
“Foreign. Them new frozen chicken Kievs,” said Duggie’s mum, “and a Findus mince pancake with minted, processed peas.”
Yes, when you’d seen the future, you couldn’t really take the past seriously.
About as natural as spreading honey on a smear of excrement.
And the way Matt [that’s Matt Score from Hair Tom – look at the earlier posts for info. Go on! You know you want to!] – sky high on Coca-Cola – was looking at the pair of us as if we were a sample of the honey and crap mix, residing on the sole of his Hush Puppy.
The other thing is, travelling back in time, you know, you’re never really there. [again, look it up, Duggie and his mate were back in 1982, or have been for a while now…] It’s like you’re always comparing things. Technology, the fact people can and do smoke anywhere, old cars that look new, fashions.
1982. Not just the year good taste forgot (I realise people were still tainted by the ‘70s until about 1985). 1982 is the year people have forgotten [Steve Hill obviously hasn’t, he writes this garbage] except for The Falklands.
Mainstream music was pants - nothing new there – telly was a pale imitation of life, except Minder, on three, soon to be four channels.
Start of Channel 4 [looking through Duggie’s eyes at his boring upbringing]
Duggie remembers the start of Channel 4 really well.
It was an exciting innovation. It sticks in Duggie’s mind because he had to fix a puncture on is bike - fast – so he didn’t miss the first edition of ‘Countdown’ ever broadcast.
Winter. A dark afternoon. Duggie sat in his parent’s front-room (“it was a front room, too,” says Duggie, “before they built the extension round the back of the house and moved the room there. I saw Tommy Cooper peg-out in the same room.”) he was wearing a baggy green, hand-knitted jumper. His fingers were caked in bike grease as he watched the new future unfold.
(“Early C4 was strange, the shows had no atmosphere, like fresh plaster drying in an unpainted new-build dining room”, says Duggie).
Once you’d been in the future and were a backward moving time-traveller, you couldn’t sit there like Duggie did that day in his parents front room, fingers smelling of rubber from his new inner-tube.
Channel Four travelled a timeline from showing unseen-for-years classic ‘60s films, like ‘Billy Liar’ and ‘Georgie Girl’ and resurrecting The Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan and Man About The House, to wading through the cess-pool of ‘reality TV’ and Property shows.
And TV went from something to catch – or you missed it – unless you had a £400 VHS recorder, to something to sample or discard at your own leisure, using iPlayer, DVD and Sky boxes.
“Duggie!” said Duggie’s mum, “your dinner’s ready. You want it in the front-room, so you can watch the new telly thingy?”
“Yes, Mum. What we got?” he said, picking some black muck from under his fingernails with his front teeth.
“Foreign. Them new frozen chicken Kievs,” said Duggie’s mum, “and a Findus mince pancake with minted, processed peas.”
Yes, when you’d seen the future, you couldn’t really take the past seriously.
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