Dwelled in a warm bed talking improperly to CB. Got up and stepped out. Got to Costa Coffee Co. at 11am. It’s very very busy. For a moment I was waiting for a comfy chair away from those relentless hordes. Now like the table I briefly depended on I am uniquely solitary – a fragile flower amongst the trampling hooves of a faction finding frenzy. Is there such a revelation as coffee shop burnout? Apparently not?
- Category Archives My Blog
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On turning 40
So I turned 40 on Thursday week and I felt like some huge obstacle/object was removed from my life. Like I was upon the threshold of a dream and this feeling hasn’t disappeared over the ridge yet. It feels like I need to get away from the dull news headlines quick enough and turn away from a stream of meaningless phantoms chasing me from the 20th centuries opiate of the masses: just to see real people.
I woke up today at 8:45am, but I don’t work until 4pm, did my ablutions, drank a cup of coffee, watched an hour of BBC news on repeat; ever 15 minutes, and waited patiently for mother to return from her post exam appointment with the doctor. Her lungs are fine, but she has this repetitive cough. Has had now for 10 years. Maybe it is stress related or it is an allergen? We don’t know. She needs to know for closure. If it is a post nasal drip it must drive her crazy! I had that for about a year in 2007/08 and I was losing the plot working for the YHA. Those damp conditions I suffered at YHA Alfriston in the room from the swamp!
At quarter to eleven I see the masses of aged and postnatal obliged to ponder a quadrant of their existences here in Cost Coffee Co., Wetherby and I have plunged headlong into Amon Düül II Yeti – an album which makes me feel primary and bare and existential in the first flashes of light in all the darkness yawning before me.
I love coffee in the morning; I love that burnt and earthy smell drifting into my peripheries. But I’d much prefer the drift of a younger crowd and a conversation. I dream of the poets and philosophers of Paris and London in the regency coffee shops or Bakunin, Blanc and International Workingmen’s Association.
Stephen Betts turned 39 on Wednesday the 8th and we returned to the Scotts Arms on Thursday to a degustment of pub fayre and a cacophony of merry laughters. We were in fine form and the scenery is magnificent: a cultured jewel. Ham and chickenTagliatelle for him and Balmoral chicken for me: chicken dry as a bone. I like the regularity of that visit and those 3 girls are truly dark and wonderful.
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London
Time to leave the freezing northern counties for the metropolis; which is cold.
Drink Drink and perambulate from an Angry royal to disposed quays.
Legends of the shits in the bushes.
On February morns by Edward’s manorAnd wet feet sagging after the thaw.
Ending toes and body snap through London.Unfolding back upon ourselves again.
And I plunge below our mad monarch.
Deposed the corruption of 3 days haste.Back on board in the sullen grey
With dispassionate souls eyes down
Final goodbye is Moma! and still water.Hi again north tramps, and crowded misanthropes.
Fear I have before leaving stage east and back my merry tailed boy.Fairview Viognier 2009, Paarl, South Africa
Chilcas Cabernet Sauvignon Seleccionada 2009, Valle de Colchagua, Chile/blockquote>
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January so far
Another disappointing ‘can’t stay in can’t go out’ Thursday night. Wasting life’s meagre living on a losing streak.
This is my current abiding abode.
Feeling fatter and drinking too many wrecking toasts.
Wetherby I’m here for a long pause.
But what else speak you?
Silence for all-comers without knowing.
Left for a different sort of muse and sung praise.
Water and old age is everywhere
The water that gives me fear.
Yet provides me with the final tare
A lingering welling up of tears
Mettle was once revelry. Her?
A dream of twisting bodliness
Flames of rouge and bitter savagery
She stars above all betwixt
In a dancing pattern.I fought all and now I feel naught
I thought always now I am fraught
On the edge of old ages grasp
I am chocking for a long moment.Trying to be useful and not a slob.
But I turned into Brown’s for a binge
Gewürztraminer and meat plate consumed and discussed.
This being an early Friday 13th.The single most clear moment of food-and-wineitude occurred in St Mawes one summers day 2010. Three amazing courses and one truly awesome Pinot Gris/Grigio. Alta Adige Tiefffenbrunner 2008.
Why did I end so fuelled up on Friday??
Life is now officially measured in coffee grounds and paper cups, lattes and cappuccino, fraps and smoothies. A cafe of oblivion. A cafe resounding the voices pellmell and eyes forlorn. Gasping and desperate to occupy a number of leather bound constrains. If I move my space will be devoured up in a melee.
So I’ve exited boldly after an hour of coffee ground into dust; but 5,000 persons forget to allow exit prior to entry and bullish push past me in drastic haste; fleeing for one on a stricken liner.
After a true gut lowering experience when I discovered my WordPress site had vanished along, with my numerous observations since September last, I have just spent a desperate weekend trying not to fret and freak-out too much. The more I pondered the loss the more fear I set free in my mind. It was the largest disaster I could conceive. The loss of all my mind currents languid, turbid and tangled gone from the world. Gone up in a cyber smoke.
Luck has it that all is backed up regularly and reassuredly automatically so I am relieved.
A minor espresso in a rouge, brown, tan, autumnal shaded costa.
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My Pal
Oh the years we’ve been spending together in our complicated relationships: You’ve most definitely had your piece of cake and eaten it too.
For all the times I’ve come home from a long distance, and had the fear you’d have forgotten our fun, there has been no reason to worry worry. Within that snarl is a long awaited hello and a negotiation of places in the household.
You know never to ask me for what you should never have; for that you have the rest of the family.
Your muzzle licks and nips my chin, lips, ears and head, but without anger or threat: such a tender Snoops. I am home and welcome.
Should I take you for a long walk? You’ll raise a claw to tap me and encourage me not to relent; I’d not relent boy.
I see you nestled on the sofa, but you like company in your dreams mister dog and you bark at me and tell me you would like to feel protected and safe.
While you chase rabbits or cats in your slumber or splash spray in a summer mist or we climb to the top o’er Lime Kiln Lane and you excitedly show you’re free or in a crowd of bullocks you scarper because I tell you so(you want to return, but can not) or run with a gamut of barley heads like waves in the sea your nose shows high. Everyday, my boy, is the miracle of your simple happiness; but I dare say you verily hate the pong you daily produce which is a byproduct of your existence. Run from that warm, acrid pile you have left, with instructions, deep in the undergrowth; run ‘shit’ scared.
Forever the stars will remember your name: master of silhouettes in satin greyness and a runner of fleetfoottedness falling four paws upon the expectant soil.
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Where once we thrived
Our souls soar on riverbanks and shorelines
The troubles of modernity drift beyond the horizon
And leave our minds clear to repair homewards.Without this gentle cleanse life leaves us dusty
Becoming turmoil and elemental destruction
Engendered an up earthing deluge.From waters we descend to a pitiful slope
In motions of tranced thoughtless flights
Bringing us dead when once we thrived.
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Work, dodging friday nights followed by illnesses
Whenever the bus is late I really regret having to catch it at all. I am off to Ilkley, without any desire, earning £41 once I’ve paid for transit. Yesterday it was £7 return to Harrogate. Is it really worth flogging myself for an hour just to pay to get to work?
The milling numerous expectant and impatient passengers at the Wetherby bus station frighten themselves that they haven’t yet seen the very late x98. As one this cohort of tumultuous beasties jumps on the 770 which will deliver them to Leeds in the year 2099. Patience is without peer.
Quickly my journey grinds to naught with a tailback from Collingham to Seacroft and a cackling old man – this is driving nails into my palms – as a 40 minute trip now doubles.
In the rush of delays I journey without stopping for a refresher at Leeds City Station. To another well planned and simple 3 coursers at the Winter Gardens where I am needed just to carry the grub from oven to holding cupboard and dish up some Brake Bros dauphinoise for 60+ while head chef steams over saturated and dried roast Beef: a la Brake Bros again. In such a rush we are as my time is up at 9pm for another torturous journey.
One more time it will be. A wedding on Friday the 23rd then not again.
On the return leg had to avoid many many drunk and foolish people to hang around for my bus along to home. Not a pretty spectacle. Erin asked me if I was alright? I said yeah…
Creeped into a silent house, ascended to a cold made bed and smothered my self in fast becoming dreams. By the morning I felt strange, a disturbance at 1:30am and a text message at 8am.
I wanted to go out, get drunk and stumble home on Saturday. I felt crap, I looked crap and I was told I looked crap too. I left the house at 11am with a growing feeling of nausea. I had a pint of what I assumed was a restorative pint of Thatcher’s Katy and wobbled to the muse with an enlarging sense of unwell. I’d begun to plough through the Saturday edition of the Telegraph, taken a handful of swigs of Rooster’s Liquorice Stout and suddenly I couldn’t contain this feeling any longer. A momentary projectile vomit occurred. I returned to ponder if this was some passing phase. Felt my gore rise again, and decided to quit back home as I felt ‘quite faint’.
Back to a deserted home and a change of clothing. I tried to overcome the spreading of woe. I flicked numerous channels for around an hour before my guts gave out and I decided to hop into the unresisting bed where a cold chill took me.
I woke up covered in cold sweat at 10:30am, had a warm bath and sat about on edge all day. Needless to say it is Sunday and I feel less inclined to defecate: however I still feel very cold and my guts have this ongoing ache which has persisted for around 18hrs.
Oh, to feel so turbid and constrained a handful of days before I begin another new job: moan is me.
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Cats and dogs
Dogs are clumsy and generous
Cats are dainty and mean
Dogs are rough and ready
Cats are shirts and tidy
Dogs might whiff a bit
Cats will usually smell serene
Dogs take a life of walking
Cats make a life of stalking
Dogs can’t take solitary life
Cats are happier on their own
Dogs are part of the family
Cats scorn friendship alone.
Dogs are always hungry
Cats are usually lean
Cats make giant furballs
Dog licks their balls
But the they both make us happy
When we return after a long day
From the trials and tribulation
Of that thing we call an occupation
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Chefs in Aspic
Another dollar earned pressing the buttons of catering nonsense.
This week I watched a couple of exceedingly frivolous episodes of Masterchef on BBC2 and it reminds me how many chefs still aspire to present a Picasso on a plate. Somewhere abstract impressionism is alive and getting very fat in a modern kitchen. It’s how uneducated, but skilful, souls refine their finer motor operations and prove they know their gauche from their gouache.
Today I chopped some parsley to a french required level purely for presentation, chives – same, dill – same. Visual represented green triffles to bolster over boiled potatoes, carrots and sprouts. No flavour consideration.
Tray upon tray of tarnishing cheese cakes – ready for eating except I had to remove the tidy flan case and ruin to juxtapose with wilted Xmas. Oh Brakes Bros you do concentrate out any aspiration of pallet originality and I am dragged screaming ‘this isn’t food’.
I earned my money and exited stage right.
To watch 3 bold people challenge this rusted Brake Bros convention,and put before the piggy(Greg Wallace) and the chef(Michel Roux Jr.) amazing creativity, can make me want to have been a chef since I was 16 too. All the skills they have in their repertoire stab blind those who over boil and roast to death, and garnish for nothing.
The plate should be cleaned by the act of eating. Not one scrap should be waiting the kitchen porter’s scrub, scour or brush. Once in another time the very plate was also edible: shouldn’t we return there too?
Ash was the star of the show: great skills and perfect presentation, but also a simplicity that Steve and Claire could resolve in their heady workout. I noticed Ash sweated most in his fury: I’ve been there when the sweat runs down the face as a saline drip.
Champions work up a sweat and toil relentlessly.
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Back to the future “The Ghost part 1″
I wrote this at another time and in another mood, but it’s still possible for me to feel likewise occasionally
Monkey puzzle trees right, left and left left. A solitary weeping willow too. Arranged around the Eastgate/Quarryhill roundabout, which is now disused where once there were fountains and before that a Fina Garage. I am travelling back towards Wetherby on the 3rd of May and I am telling myself I need to visit Mind, the mental health charity, on Kirkstall Lane, and I must venture there soon.
This bus always takes the same forsaken route to get out of Leeds; with its bland ‘To Let’ bulldozed wastelands, low rise warehousing with its pulled down shutters and a Nissan flagship and another few dozen flurried showrooms which are so out of place in this cheap rent part of Leeds. Where the very nature itself springs from the roofs of too often forgotten Victoriana: Tailors’, Machinists’ and Pressers’ Trade Union on Cross Stamford Street.From behind me on the bus I hear the sound of second hand ‘r n b’, the dumb and chavie youths music of distinction, but this is being played out by that most mysterious of rogue-40-somethings: Shane Bell and I have to put up with this sound for the next 50 minutes(bass too loud for me in this tranquil inner ear and vocoder ever present). Badly designed or cheaply constructed headphones that leak too much sound for a personal Hi-Fi?
(An ellipsis is some and so many things,but to be eclipsed by Tony Tomlin,
who is a glimpsing crazy,is enough really to be or not to beOr should we all shout ‘do you not see?’)Earlier today, on the 3rd, I returned to cash in my unused Bonobo ticket for a very generous £12.I have most of their albums on MP3 and a few tracks on a Ninja Tunes compilation, which I hardly listen to any more. Plus I really didn’t have the desire, nor drive, to see this ‘band’ in my current mood. I can justify this because I only like about 2 or 3 tracks in total from their work and I really dislike the ‘baggage of the sycophant’ that goes with any live music event. I love music in all its guises just not the hype that follows it everywhere money can be made. When our dog is at home there is much more enjoyment in him than a cramped sweaty noisy concert that leaves my ears screaming that high frequency noise and he’ll put me in a better place mentally too.(How much party funds do the political parties waste on planting flags on Roundhay Road to beg and crave our votes?)Further along the route, with the buzz ringing oppressively from behind, I see the fading yellow of the oil seed Rape fields and realise the year and season is moving towards summer and I am without a job again. I want to see a different sight and hear a different sound, but also feel more contentment if I am to get through another day.Earlier Dan, my retiree friend from Sunderland who wears his grumpiness like the Trilby he continually sports, was complaining that he has had his fair share of suffering at the hands of the savage, cold, empty state for far too long it seems. He speaks of the light blue bowler hatted brigade who judged him short-sighted as a child. Who forced him to take some miscellaneous eye drops that he is convinced brought on this physical change in his eyesight. He recalls the large bespectacled Maccam lady told him he would have to wear national health glasses for the rest of his natural life, like an institutionalism. She said that it’s not bad being blind now the frames are so much more fashionable. I find it ironic that all his hatred for the welfare state and its Orwellian darkness that he was a teacher for many years, worked at the courts as a clerk of court and now he distributes mail at Park Place Job-centre all for the system. Dan rails against what has always entrapped him and there isn’t anything left for him except the hope his daughter Laura is a success in the acting world and that there is always the often, too often, pint of Kölsch he consumes at the end of the day. I feel for the poor guy; as at the end of the rope Dan swings and I’m there nursing my Dark Star IPA next to him.
(I was once Stood in an olive grove on Vis looking over the harbour towards the monastery. Over my head hung heavy fruits ready to be picked from the branch: to be pressed into oil or brined for preservation, and I wanted to belong in that sanctuary over the bay, but I have no faith. I want a solemn life, but I have no faith.)
May 4th is another day of crawling into bed by 12noon. The last two days walks with the dog have come to this and it feels a bit like a siesta I am having in the unseasonally warm spring. I think I’m exhausted by some basic trial. On our usual 2 hour energetic morning stroll I decided to go into the field beyond St. George’s Field but we walked into a ton of trouble as in the field there were bullocks who very quickly took a dislike to Snoops as we skirted the bottom end of the oblong to come back up towards St. George’s Field from that rectangle. Maybe we got just too close yet some primary instinct took over in those cows (who can never have seen a dog before) and so we had to scarper into the next field lightning fast. We lost our ball. Snoops was trying to go back the way he went, but he couldn’t overcome the innate, but obvious, fear . I felt primal but not scared, my adrenalin flowing, with all these raging bullocks swarming around me: I shouted and made signals with my arms to shoo them. Strangely they didn’t see me as a instinctual threat at all but keep trying to get at the dog. We eat you!May 5th
Back to Leeds already down to £80 from provisional £130 and how am I meant to pay for electricity, water and food from that frugal amount?Retail is a false economy. Retail has really been benefiting from higher purchase, bank loans and credit. Now the credit is gone and all the minor industries that feed the larger ones are slowly vanishing. The food chain of business. At the top sits faceless commercial tyranny.
In fact it’s all a lie. The need for materialism is a trap we’re forced into to keep us sedated.
We need a roof over our heads, a comfy bed, food, drink, entertainments, clothes, a cuddle…what else?
It’s going to rain hard tonight so I will make jerk chicken, but I need to have fun tonight and this isn’t going to happen with £50 left after I went to Morrison’s!
It’s occurred to me today, the 6th of May 2011 while supping coffee and eating a sunrise muffin at £3.45 in Starbucks, I have ceased to matter to anyone. I am clinging to an existence so banal and unfruitful that it is taking all energies from me and leaving me equally empty within the shell of my present fattening shape. It’s like this feeling is some disease that is spreading backwards from my extremities to my heart or my head and into my very ‘soul’. It’s like some numbness, some paralysis, which is leaving me voiceless in such a noisy and ‘word-full’ world. I am empty at my core.Not so long ago I actual found myself unable to see any part of the journey I was on not filled with a noisy, dense and threateningly cacophonous wordiness. At every point of the compass I saw, or heard or thought about words (in Penryn I think). Usually in either the form of orders, rules or laws or else sales, offers or promises. I just wanted for a while to see, hear or think without vocabulary before my eyes. I didn’t want this so I closed my eyes. I have developed the deep abhorrence to what I don’t want and hatred is a very underrated emotion – I want to kill because of it (latently of cause). I wanted a basic reality where there was nothing spoken, thought or written. Is it the basic humanity in me who aspires to base instincts away from the busy consuming weary wordiness. Everywhere there are colours and textures and large volumes of both. There are bags filled with shoes from Next and a person carrying Ping golfing umbrella and many many more with their chilling brown Primarkian statements.
I return to Wetherby on the X98 to discuss the emotions I feel and the reasons for my sudden understanding or my change inside. With only 2% of my iPhone charge left I will undoubtedly be like Samuel Coleridge soon…How we drift through the different stages of our life is something we may be hardly aware of unless something truthfully and epiphenomenonly majestic appears? Something so blindingly obvious that it is hard to decide why we’d never seen this thing before.It is the number 6 – my mothers grill has number 6 as its maximum…why not 5 or 10…it this some Sumerian mystery? As I prepared mini naan breads with homemade onion marmalade and mature cheddar cheese, already grated, I am struck by the reason behind this number 6. I seem to recall having read that their number system was based on the number 6 and it is why we have 144, 24, 12 and 6 so often repeated prior to the decimal system of 5, 10 and 100.Is this a moment of clarity when I realise the importance of the number 6 to all else in the cosmos; or perhaps just this house with its 10 rooms and 2 gardens (12 spaces in which to ruin ones mind).As I eat into my lunch at 16;25 on a keyboard where the numeral 2 and the letter V have mysteriously decided to leave the other 100 something keys for reasons they best understand. With the V2 gone the war is recalled and all the interlinked series of events leading from the number 6 to the Second World War and my stuffing my face with the pleasures of bread, cheese, a sweet accompaniment and a grating of fresh black pepper. Its all the same; isn’t it?
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Back to the Future “Data Processing MADE SILLY, 2010″
Apart from a little editing, I wrote this during our occupation of 40 West Park Drive East, Roundhay, Leeds, January 28th 2010
28/01
I went to Meet the B’ageists(help the aged) @ 1300, to pick up that IT textbook from 1976. I will pull it to pieces and use it…thank you Susan , not woolbridge, but Wooldridge?
The book is actually part of a series: just like the dogshits up the Roman’s poo alley. I needed to be eagle eyed: I am an action man, circa 1972, with my ability to step through poo alley.
What was a wool dridge? is it a ridge and a dredge or is it d’ridge short for de ridge – look at that d’ridge man! How about a d’ri-dge-man – prior to cro-magnon!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dridge
Alexis said meet the Beigeists; I like that! I think we have Alpha B’ageists and Beta B’ageists. Alpha’s work in the shop for an hour a week and Beta’s come in to talk for an hour a week. One has 2inch long grey hairs all over her muzzle; wolf like! I wonder if she stopped owning a mirror when her husband died in 1982 or maybe it is there to keep her warm? I just thought: maybe she is really a he!
I noticed our Roman’s ‘Romantic’ park is being landscaped by the local council dudes, init! Soon the bumps will be a lush rolling vista – silvan, lush and hopeful. Perhaps they will remove the random plastic bottles, the two shopping trollies and clean up the 6ft by 1ft yatching lake and maybe widen it a tad? I think I could envision it being widened and deepened to take up the whole bumpy landscape or maybe all North Leeds? Like when you expand a body of water in SimCity and make it deeper and deeper.Perhaps we could have a Marina or a Fishing village? Leeds needs a beach! Or somewhere to drowned all the crap people!
Paul took a shed load of photos of yours truly; for practice. I’m an old git now. My forehead is patchy and I have just a couple of random straggly hairs. I didn’t know this really and was thinking I still had a full head of hair! My follicles are like old people, dying one by one, standing solitarily in the end looking for a bargin. The bargin of slapheadness! (I once got told off by a bunch of grey’uns, in a Sheffield hotel, for having a folical difficulty)
Oh i am in ‘bucks, street lane, again to update my blog and get into a routine? Yep me in a routine.
I tried to listen to a hypnosis ‘tape’ by Paul Mckenna last night to help me with this West Park Drive East insomnia. It was interesting. I felt like I was buried in the warm earth and fading away. I didn’t sleep like I had expected, and Paul said I was snoring my head off, but I was having a very strange experience and didn’t think i was asleep. I was relaxed and had fallen from full consciousness, but not quite – I was in semi-consciousness; I was in a coffin, stiff and remote, but with a slight crack before me. It was as though I could just go over a hill and see ‘awakeness’ in the distance and at any time I would awaken if I didn’t accept where this CD had placed me; below comfortable in the valley of ‘tranced’?
I don’t much listen to dance music any longer and I really never liked Trance – Freaking Paul Oakenfield. I wonder why Paul Mckenna likes Trance. He struck me more of a Deep houser than a Trancehead. Indeed he looks to be the last guy to get off his box to Trance! I wonder if he ever did acid as a kid, had long hair and built huge fires to keep him warm or had Nick Hart put a flick knife to his throat? The ambient side of his hypnosis also had very little effect on me…just gimme Tim Hecker! Did people drop off when he was talking in class or did he convince his mate to give him their dinner money?
http://www.paulmckenna.com/default.aspx
I’m off to a Wedding Reception on Saturday, so won’t be in ‘bucks until Monday at the earliest. How will it cope without my rump taking up a corner and sneering at the red sea pedestrians? Hey I got some free coffee. Holiday Blend with a smiley face in the O of Holiday! Do the owners of ‘buck know this? Bagels all round!
Check out Car Bomb by Negativland…Escape From Noise (1987)
Hee hee. Nuff for now!
‘Speak! Why do you never speak?’
it is a shame of my current beliefs that there is the matter of anti-sematism. It’s not personal, but it is cultural and I do believe it quite strongly
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Higgs boson – The God Particle
And even the Abstract Entities Circumambulate her charm; 30 But our lot crawls between dry ribs To keep our metaphysics warm. 10. Whispers of Immortality, TS Eliot.
Peeling back the layers of the Atom and probing deeper into the fundamentals of the Universe is fun, but does it mean that once we find this ‘basic’ stance they’ll not be another ‘thingy’ beyond and more revelation? All our endeavours to fix a finite limit to the Universe doesn’t prevent another boundary being broken? I will never believe we have found the absolute answer. Life just isn’t that convenient. These physicians just want closure and to resolve to put the Universe’s answers in a compartment or pigeon hole. Nice try.
Always chipping away at the finite granite with more delicate chisel and hammer blow; tap and tap, and now we see a figure yawning at our slow ascent.
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“Duffer St. George” and I don’t care
When you’re down and out in Wetherby, during a cold frigid Winter when the wind whistles wildly, willing along Spring, resorting to frugality and spend-thriftiness, I reliquish my old wants with auctions of dead fashions on eBay.
Anything hinges on eBay. Anything’ll go on eBay. Everything beckons the human magpie on eBay?
Sold some Stussy, Duffer St. George and a selection of stylish but unworn ties for a mere £35. I feel this is how I will pay for Xmas this year if I don’t get more regular work?
But I wondered if I’d miss these once precious items and it happens I simply don’t care: I Don’t Care!
(The Fiery Furnaces use this motif in their song “Duffer St. George” (“Duffer St. George and I don’t care”)).
The EP is a gogo!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EP_%28The_Fiery_Furnaces_album%29
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Recommended Album – Arcade Fire “Neon Bible”
4 years older and still magnificent.
http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/arcade_fire/neon_bible/
http://rateyourmusic.com/artist/arcade_fire
you can purchase this album at:
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Pain and want
Terrible headache recurring pain since 2 Sundays ago. Last few nights I thought I’d had it: a tumour or a clot. But now it has vanished. All those painkillers I took: ibuprofen, paracetamol, aspirin and diplofenac maybe helped. I don’t know. No alcohol and taking it steady. Sleeping a lot and relaxing too. Maybe that has helped?
I now recall a passage I nearly wrote on Friday, before I lost my signal in the Vale of York.
Had a very important date to keep and, even in my present state, couldn’t let her down. When I saw a very nice image too: in black, and red lips, plunging enticing neck line, I knew that this was the right thing to do: York is fine for encounters even with a bad head and it is where all the true romantics can go.
I took the no. 412 bus from door to door, jumped off on Piccadilly to find cold waiting on the street and Pivini closed for us to meet. So I called and arranged to get warm, if we can, before 11:30 and a chance to warm our feet.
Time flew so soon and I was left alone in the eye to wonder if that was the last that I’d see? But sighed in sight and shortly sat my fair lady, with lips so cherry red, sat with warming cup until I snuggled warm on the bus back from door to door, and returned to prominence did the headache I’d had all along, amongst other fond remembrances.
Maybe I want more from the little that seems left, rattling my hide, on a dying nothing. I was like this a few years ago, before I picked up the pieces and was happy roaming and getting paid. When I saw life on Borough High Street and suddenly wanted this forever. As I ventured in all directions without recall and found much that needed knowing. Oh, ‘to be bored of London is to be bored of life’: as once said. I who is skilled-less from trade to profession and quintessentially from my father’s loins. Have wondered some parts of the Earth to put pressure on my gentleness. As I baulk and cough stubborn at a path: I tread in circles too vicious and poisoned with barbed soul. Forever tortured against this northern town which bore me but will not spurn me.
As our bus turned left into Bickerton that Friday morning I was tampering proof at the same old font and the same old winding up. Hoping a break, a snap, not a stiff recoil – it would cease seizing me. But I am essay against rigid opposition too true to turn my fortunes against the turning of some momentous cogs. A finger moving back the hands themselves isn’t asking any sense of the hours passing.
I realised the dark fallowed line running east to west was following my doomed journey, from which I should’ve turned back, but squirmed against another empty destiny I collided winglike and repeated the beatings I should know I would get. I gathered the clouds around my head and tucked them as a scarf about my leaden gaze, and attempted to forget the melancholy wool engendered there, as we forged ahead once more.
In every repeated phrase I pick up another empty divided cell and stand further back flapping about the dusty curtailed remnant – so warm, but so threatening all you ladies with empty eyeballs and summary smiles. For ever red stained lip there is more design in forethought than I, in foolish grin, could envisage.
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dodging xmas muzak
I caught the bus for a doubtful journey into Leeds;
Not so bothered but need to register for more worthy.
The dole is calling my name again, but in New Year,
And now waiting time is upon me drink coffee darkly
Can’t be traveling to Seacroft along that murky route
Just to say I am of no particular use around here
Another fifty minutes lingering over rising steams
And to hear the younger ones complain in unique breath
One so unfamiliar and singular steps for Café con leche
But with a lingering tongue more romance and rose
Some clot like lips pulsate in pustulaes pink
Over witches I spend time otherwise silent
Where grinding and steaming of milk is a chorus
That is preventing the flow of reasoning think
Which if pen were held would be held aloft
Poised, but to sink like a dagger amongst our host
Repeated and repetitious strokes striking bleeds
Save you and you’re head held repose slumped decline
Which blinking at the lights over our heads
The Halogen glare is burning my shortened sight
And telling me you are in full view of the column lost
A tapping on the dust tin of old bean trust
Reminds me not to linger over long in full blends
Greening over my eyes and repairing bludgened skull
That caffeine has so far heightened too far full.
And the reason I ran for cover is to escape Xmas din
But my eargoggles I forgot in a rush to ‘the String’
Where is it dark, not jingly, kitch and gilted rust?
Not Leeds on a December cemetery rainsoaked day
So why come and pretend I am not always this way.
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Crimple Beck Sheep Incident
On a Tuesday I, but also my mum and I, usually take cardinal shitty arse Sherburn (Snoops) dog (a Weimaraner) on his/our long walk. Today was no different. There are about 4 or 5 long looping adventurous jaunts from our first stage: 42 Braine Road.
Although Snoops does get his regular, daily, walk of up to 3 or 4 miles, it is on a Tuesday, if I’m not in employment or away, I get it into my head to scamper over moor, dale and broad open fields and through rambling thicket, jumbled bramble patches and twisting angular privies.
I always found Tuesday a none day. The carbuncle that disturbs the melancholy of Monday from steadily growing happiness of Wednesday, Thursday, etc. I ask myself often ‘Why on earth did we create this knee joint of a pointless day?’ and I make it my concern to get out come rain or shine.
From our starting point to the old Railway through Northfield House’s Estate, along Deighton Road passing Ainsty View and behind Ainsty Cresent using the Ginnel which connects Ainsty Road to Aire Road crossing Aire Road and a brief cut through Dearne Croft via the farmers Manglewort field to the Bay Horse, Lime Kiln Lane and blankets of clear ice under foot, those glorious puddles patched with ice crisp and crunchy underfoot, tractor trails filled with a dusting of white freeze streaming to our right up passed the Quarry; we venture towards Crimple Beck: a unused route to Spofforth.
Our route, it warned, is closed for work on a bridge…but I must ascertain this and decide if I won’t go this silent and solemn route. I use the first overgrown bridge and tell mum – Yes we will: if a bridge has stood here for 200 years it’s not gonna go today: and if it did while I crossed it then it is my tough luck!
Snoops simply loves dipping in and out of the beck; which today is running quite high and is that grey/brown unappealing shade: Snoops cares not.
After we have stubbled, getting snagged through briars and mired in muddy hollows and the loamy soil licks the back of my weathered boots and pants while mother lingers behind and makes every footstep count for her troubled knee, and we have crossed all three bridges that supposedly closed this path I spy 2 sheep ahead.They are out of their fold, which is on the left bank of the Beck, and look mischievously ashamed. I shout to an off the lead Snoops, ‘come here, now!”, the command ‘now’ is the one i use which means no shenanigans. We put him on the lead and stumble towards the retreating sheep.
Suddenly, as we round the patch of brambles on our right we are surprised by a struggling sheep upside down and twisted in garrotting lines dug in deep and the dear creature looked desperate and wide eyed. Mum held Snoops away as he was desperate to investigate this troubled ovine.
The sheep laid very quiet and allowed me to try to break the twines: each one thorny and pricking my fingers. With the only sharp implement: our front door key, cutting through the knotted yarn; damp and dirty matted wool I rescued this struggling creature and felt like my disobedience along the path was worthwhile.It seemed at ease while I hunkered down on my haunches and worked against the many threads darting around its woollen frame. Like Velcro it was but more ‘vice-like’ a grip. At first I tried to be brave and ignore the pain inflicted in my finger ends by the minute thorns, but this took me back to Vis and the Prickly Pear experience. Mother passed me her white fleece gloves and I at first wore them but found that this didn’t help too much. Eventually I used them off my hand, doubled over, gripping the creepers while I sawed away with the house key.
The sheep seemed to have decided to trust me, not to struggle and wait patiently, or exhaustedly, for me to free its pitifulness trapped there. I got a feeling from its pathetic state that it had been composed so for at least one whole night and day.
The dog was pulling away and towards the supine sheep; Snoops can be a little indecisive, and I heard him whistling in a desperation. I wonder if he wanted to help or just to worry the sheep?
I began to feel that there was one part of the twisting that I really couldn’t manage with the key. With sheer strength I focused on snapping the very green stem. It helped as once I felt under the sheep I realised this one point was all that was left. I rolled the sheep over so I could come at that nub and release the calm sheep.
For the first time in my life I acted without consideration of anything just to save this poor animal. I saw the sheep observing me its brown eyes quite dilated. It felt good; really good.
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A week later
I woke up with a start; mister dog is barking at 8:30. I register that I still have a headache. 543200 to local doctors surgery: as this is a week of headaches. 10:40 appointment.
John Cleese on Breakfast: telling the same old and tired anecdotes: I do fear John Cleese is stuck in the past. Making a DVD about the past is just another money making malarkey and confirms his directionlessness.
Where am I today? Back to the ‘square of one’ of being out of work. I contemplate signing on the dole; an increase of income but an end to ad-hoc work. I’ve not worked for Citirecruit now for 2 weeks…I saw Charles on Saturday who is a monologue of conceited self glory and firstly asks what I am working at and then regales me with empty importance (las vegas: best hotel… But you were in Las Vegas a place created for all the worst clowns, gamblers, suckers and god damned capitalist that ever there was).
Down to post office and queue to hades where the ferry man is on strike again. A man and ??daughter?? who appeals ‘good girl’ and ‘don’t touch’ bleating every 10 seconds: not one word of encouragement or joy to one who hopes for love. The girl is silent and stony. I find me considering the real relationship there?
Costa at 10 and the fear of the mother, the young and the old(Wetherby in 1)
I guess today is winter as the gale blows along the market place and damp snow falls diagonally.
To the surgery across the damp, muddy, busy car park on Crossley Street. And another room full of mothers, their young and the dead. I’m here by default.
I am rushing towards a great nothing. The void within me is striking the void without me. Do I ask for a prescription to return to numbed happiness?
Back for the left over food from Friday, sell some more stuff on eBay and chill out with mister dog. I took first anti-D for a couple of months. And now have that slightly warm and mongy feeling: the edge of an E; it only comes on at the first instance.
Final task of the day is back to horrendous queuing of the Post Office. Tedious shuffling and nervous laughter. Is it worth the hassle of the money made; it is a buyer’s market.
Is this what England was like in the 1970′s…queues everywhere and fingers grasping for a pittance?
Route back and to mother with eyes glued to TV and Online Dating. Appalling. What is good about Monday?
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Monday Monday meet Friday Friday
Monday, Monday:
So, finally, I have walked in to the right place at the right time. And now can give myself to The Woolpack and Esholt for some time, build up a trade and hopefully stamp myself on an establishment. Time will tell.
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MHz…GHz
Friday, Friday
…stop building these hopes too high Daniel! How much difference 5 days makes.
I often accept anything I do as the potential big break I’ve been waiting for, which usually backfired; why do I search so?
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Kill me!
Is it just me or is it impossible to be trusted by owners of pubs, restaurants, bars, etc., and to be allowed to do the job as well as is humanly possible, and go a day without a criticism, while they work little or not at all, and never say thanks for all your hard work. You stand, or sit, at the bar drinking copiously while some of us work harder than Samson.
I repent of all your attitudes. Capitalism and greed breeds chatters, chains and clatters: I tried so hard to pitch myself but got summary defeat in exhaust repercussions. The human world is fake and it lies; it finds faults where there is naught.
When you have a plasterer come and work for you you don’t tell him how to repair a cracked surface: why is it alright in hospitality to undermine your skilled servants: the slave’s slave.
Fucking loud bastards at 2am: no respect for the righteous.
I woke up with a start at 9am to gather my thoughts post the chaos of a rambling mismanaged pub in Esholt: the only resemblance of reality me working my tits off. Packed my bags to exeunt right when this has run it’s course.
The smell of foisty dogs and the mess of the space above the languishing beer glasses, snoring patrons on bar below: I glance left and right and gather my strength to step over the threshold to the darkest of dark kitchens. And I am not illusioned and see piles of disregarded plates and dusty bread strewn surfaces: this is a carbuncle.
I plunge towards pomodorro and Bologna happiness but hesitate at unclean uncleven disaster zone. She, the mother of the clan, steps in at 10am and asks me if I am alright?
No, mess!
No, noise!
No, nitpick…
No, not for me.She tells me ‘I won’t have you coming into my pub and telling me how to run it’
Fine, taxi to Guisley and then back to reality and a bottomless feeling of sickness.Is this December? I really wonder if life is so banal that we just shop continually. The decadent masses we are become. And engorge our selves like slaves to a reality that hardly exists anymore. There is a reason I am sure but millions, billions even, know not why and yet I keep trying to be a part of this inherent truth. This flaw is over: it is my mission to escape; but not through conceited suicide.
At this time of year we need to look hard at that guy who came to save us all, but failed so so badly that we can’t see what this time of year is meant to be telling us (not that I think he came for any purpose or even came at all)
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Food | Canela Café
Pão de queijo
via Food | Canela Café.
If you ever get to Convent Garden or Carnaby Street you must try this eatery.
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Wkend
Well another Friday, Saturday and Sunday spending everything on boozing and being hungover and feeling older.
While ever I’m unable to have a day without the consideration of alcohol: either finding the funds to tip down my neck or talking to myself about the physical need to step away from the oblivion that it is.
Now on Monday I am in route to Esholt, location of the Woolpack, to get myself on track and healthy? And find a reason for having all the skills I’ve developed since 2007.
Jesus, it is nearly 5 years since YHA Alfriston: Wendy, Steve, Robin and of course Scarlett…
Off to meet with Denise, the landlady who sounds quite in need?
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ROWIP
I’ve recently become interested in the disappearance of a number of paths, route, common ‘highways’ in the Wetherby area.
There are 3 inparticular that I am greatly concerned over.
1. The keep out, patrol dogs, barb-wired and an electric gate across a section of Flintmill Lane and Leys Lane route along the river between the Sewerage Works, The Flint Mill and Thorp Arch Park to the East, and downstream of the Wharfe and on the South Bank of the River at The Leys.
2. The disappearence of the footpath that continued west from Saint George’s Field to Linton/Collingham Bridge, to the South of the Linton Golf Course, along the North Bank of the Wharfe.
3. The barrier, padlocked gate at the top of Old Boston Road between Boston Spa, Grange Park, Micklethaite and Wetherby to the South of the original round-about.I have in the last few weeks begun to ponder how these changes have occurred without local opposition to the alterations of the routes.
I have begun an exhaustive search through archival records, internet sources and used some anacdotal evidence to help me delve deeper.
Most recently I have contacted the Ramblers Association to get some advice as to how footpaths, etc., are regulated. The Campaigns Administrator, Emily Shaw, sent me this reply:
“Dear Daniel,
Thank you for your email.
Firstly, I would suggest going to the rights of way team at the highway
authority (county council or unitary) to see if this path is a public
right of way. This can be done by checking the definitive map which is
the legal record of public rights of way.If it is then the highway authority would have had to ensure the
footpath is reinstated.Alternatively, If a path has been used by the public, without
interruption, for 20 years a right of way may well have come into
existence. You can make an application to the highway authority to have
the path added to the definitive map based on user evidence. All you
need is to get at least 7 people (preferably more) who have used the
path during the 20-year period to fill in a ‘user evidence’ form. The
rights of way team at the highway authority should provide all the
information required to make the application. Further information on
this process is also available from the Ramblers websitePlease see our website for more information on footpath law.
http://www.ramblers.org.uk/info/britain/footpathlaw/footpathlaw.htm
Kind Regards
Emily Shaw
Campaigns Administrator”In the Wetherby Library tonight, 22nd Nov, I was looking at some old OS maps to see if there were any clear routes marked in all the cases I am looking into.
Clearly on the maps from the 50′s and the 60′s I found evidence of the raised embanked path that ran along from Saint George’s Field in the bottom south western running to Collingham/Linton Bridge.From the OS sections 1961(revised) PLAN SE 3847 & SE 3947
PLAN SE 3848 & SE 3948
and
Sheet SE 44NW from the early 1950′s I can clearly demonstrate the route along the riverside and also closer to date the route is highlighted on the plan from 1980 to develop(open-up) Wetheby for the masses…-
- The ‘Segway’ Secret Garden
Although there maybe was some legitimate process the Golf Course took to change the designation of the strip of path that ran along the bank this is improbable as no one I have so far discussed this with at the Wetherby News have any knowledge this path existed at all.
Living in this town from the sleepy 1970′s until the frantic 2010′s has led to a collosal change in the physical make up of the landscape, but at what cost and to whose benefit?
From the sky, with Google Earth, the full scale of changes to access to the bottom end of Flint Mill Lane on the North Bank and Leys Lane on the South Bank becomes apparent. Also I have tracked down the recent property development records at Leeds City Council(https://publicaccess.leeds.gov.uk/online-applications/propertyDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=HWJ3IMJBLI594) and it seems than there have been no challenges to the changes taking place at that locale. For Instance much of the work on the Flint Mill appears to have been completed and then posumously/retrospectively approved by the planning department…
**Retrospective Listed Building application for alterations to form raised conservatory and balcony over part of side and repositioned entrance doors to front
Ref. No: 08/01412/LI | Status: Application Approved**
**Retrospective application for alterations to form raised conservatory and balcony over part of side and repositioned entrance doors to front
Ref. No: 08/01417/FU | Status: Application Approved**
The most unbelieveable aspect of the property development are the numerous features added without question to the natural river landscape. Now present are a Pond/Lake, a Gazebo and a major bridge over the Wharfe – a bridge referred to as an ‘Agricultural Access Bridge’. The river must be atleast 100yards across at that bend between Wray Wood Farm and the Flint Mill so how did this monster of a bridge get built in the blink of an eye (the one running from Micklethaite to Wetherby took thousands of years and was only made to the current proportions in 1824)?
With all this change to the Flintmill complex(as I am going to call it) there is now no access at all to the path, road, bridleways, etc connecting the back of Thorp Arch Park and Horn Bank along the river. I have again consulted the OS maps in Wetherby Library and it appears that many of the dashed footpath lines used to link up beyond the new gated and obstructed woods that are contained in this ‘secret’ development. A development that has all the hallmarks/feeling of Howard Hughes reclusiveness and I believe that this site was until recently occupied by the deceased multi-millionaire Jimi Heselden. An obituary on the BBC website suggest that he was a great man(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-14167868)…Why would a great man require such secrecy and control of his environment; a great man would share his sanctuary with his other and a great man wouldn’t think of nature’s ‘fish’ as his own unless he controlled the River Wharfe primarily to feed his meglomania?
I hope that I’m not venting too much at the the situation I have found at the bottom of Ley Lane and Flintmill Lane’s
Have we gone privacy potty?
The 'Segway' Secret Garden
As a young boy I used to take my cousins dogs out walking in Boston Spa and we quite often would take them along Old Boston Road and up passed the Gunter Wood, Grange Park and the Wharfe upstream under the fly-over and out past the Police Station on Boston Road. But now, today, we couldn’t approach Grange Park all but had to trundle along a Bridleway(once it used to be for racehorse training) right on top of the current 3 lane A1(M). What ever happened to right to roam and why all these obsticles on what should be a stress free journey from A to B via a spot of quiet and beauty.
Is it time to start challenging these changes to our historic highways and byways ‘Once a highway always a highway’
is a legacy of the United Kingdoms history; fought over from Magna Carte to the Great Reform Act, etc. With the enforcement of the Inclosure Acts amounting to highway class robbery I feel any unjustified control of free space is another modern form of class obstruction.Tomorrow I speak to the highway authority; I hope I’m not just expanding my spleen…
I traveled through the battering rains and squalid winds at Red Hall to present my concerns to very open and honest and very helpful Leeds City Council: ROWIP depart.
I learnt that I must first read the PIN procedures of the rights of way challenge that was upholder on the side of the Golf Club.
I’ve been considering the reason for a path to exist at all along that fringe. And perhaps from the POV of bringing cattle to market to Wetherby’s weekly cattle market(now vanished) if your farm was in the vicinity of the south shore from Collingham to Harewood the most direct route would take you over the Wharfe by the the ford that once sat where now the bridge(once bridges).
There must’ve existed a route from the time when Wetherby got its market charter in 1250 until I last used it in 1999 when I took Ben Marr to the Windmill, Old Star, Half Moon before coming back. Apart from when the river is in flood, or high, the Wharfe behind Stammersgate is the logical crossing point as it is the point where the ravine drops back from Linton Common and becomes a flat ‘Ings’ for bringing cattle to market.
At some point in history Wetherby race course also was in this vicinity and probably logically for the same reason? Bringing your horses to a central and flat area before the A1 or combustion engines existed.
Why does the railway, Collingham station all congregate in this area?
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