a suited man - business type - brown-sheen suit, clean patent shoes, Brylcream or Vittel applied hair, lightly tanned - striding up Winchester High Street with a small leather trunk on wheels, a bit battered, spray painted with gold stars and crescent moons like a magicians gown in kid's books - who is he? why does he have that case? where is he going?

he notes the fact that my acclimatization to recent cooler northern climes means I am wandering around down here in just my shirt sleeves, feeling warmer than others who complain of the cold -

he smiles, winks and crosses at a red light

4/9/06

Throwing thoughts – now I’m a long way from home; loved one a day away – pigeons cry the morning in (for help?) outside my window – the eradication of doubt and the day has begun – our tired landlady is up already, starting her labours: breakfast ready, curtains pulled all round the house – I am trying to find a routine but I am out of place – the harvest is in and we are risible on demand – looking homeward to:

adventures on the road and the sweet caesura of Caerlaverock where time stood still for 24 hours – and Watendlath with it’s heavy storm water churning the becks and filling cascades all the way down to the swelling river hundreds of feet below. Surely a package of bliss for the overwhelmed?

The icon rocks on his wedding day in the desert – his marriage is to a similar being; the sun and moon combined – and it is a wedding of words and shared beliefs, a laying down of history and moments of found philosophy before the punchline – by the end of the ‘service’ he is a changed man, but even that is nothing new –

meanwhile some damn yankee fool wants to build an elevator shaft to the stars -

- - - - - -

The Independent gives us theses figures under the headline ‘The war on terror, five years on’:

2001 Al-Qaida (?) attacks on WTC kill 2819. US unleashes ‘war on terror’.
2006 No deaths from terrorism within US since. Worldwide, up to 72,265 have died. UK ‘fighting homegrown’ terrorism. Bombers kill 52 in London, July 2005. In Iraq 41,639 estimated dead since US backed coalition invades in 2003.

The list goes on.

What was I saying about some damn yankee fool?

3/9/06

Leaving Keswick – double rainbow at road’s edge to Penrith station appearing to chase the bus I’m in – then the sun breaks through the rain torrents and the thing fades –

She wears gold lame ankle boots, tight jeans and a baseball cap – he is in a pale blue shell-suit – they chain smoke Camels –

The first announcement at the station is for the Glasgow train, stopping at Carlisle, Lockerbie and on to Glasgow – in a Sunday supplement there is an essay on a Saudi terrorist, one of the pilots of one of the jets that destroyed the World Trade Centre – the face in a printed in day-glo yellow and black stares back preserved for all time – How come the one is more famous than the many?

Another woman, younger than the first, stretches and rolls her head to relieve stress; she is pretty flagrant with her exercising there on the platform, revealing her midriff. I almost expect her to encourage the rest of us around her to start pumping the air with a sequence of aerobics – but lame boot woman lights up another fag and butts it up with the man, one drag each -

The Loft – a night club in the centre of a Cumbrian frontier small-town, tourist magnet for the Western Lakes – tonight, up on the mezzanine, DJ Frank Clapp is, as always, in his Perspex-shroud music booth – most of which is a mock nod to the ancestry of his job, a turntable that doesn’t work, headphones he never uses – the whole playlist now copied to a laptop snuck away in the corner; with one click he can let the whole evening run without lifting a finger further (unless its Friday or Saturday when he offers up the odd request slot, at which point he will have to trace tracks with the cursor and double click after a brief announcement of name and reason for celebration or didicatee, who will of course whoop it up down below on the dance-floor) –

Tonight however, Frank will see something that will open his weary eyes, something he never thought imaginable here in this backwater – this hill prison – but that’ll come later, for now let’s take a look at Frank’s home -

Opposite his booth, on the far wall, next to the (tonight unopened) lounge bar and above the leather smooth sofa where the VIPs (if ever they come) get first choice, is the huge picture of naked Ophelia (or as bouncer Mickey Mick calls her ‘I’d feel ya’) – it’s a gilded frame photograph blown up to 6x5 of an auburn tressed sylph, lying on her back, breasts exposed and partially garlanded with laurel leaves, one leg bent to just hide her pussy and her face turned slightly to the right where her parted lips almost kiss her own fingertips in a kind of pseudo-orgasmic moan – all this through a soft-porn soft-focus fog – it’s the only picture on any wall (there are two plasma screens, one next to Frank’s booth, the other (bizarrely) over the podium at the dark edge of the dance floor) –

Our Ophelia was once the girlfriend of ex-club owner Max Silloth – both killed themselves in a suicide pact by jumping off Ladies Edge and breaking almost every bone in their beautiful bodies on the way down – the police told local reporters that when they found them they ‘looked like puppets who’d had the strings cut’- Max had made it fundamentally clear in both a letter to all his staff and in his will that he wanted Ophelia to stay on the wall and she had asked the same in her own missive – found, incidentally, with them at the bottom of the Edge – this was meant to be seen as a symbol of her eternal beauty and a triumph of goodness over evil, at least that was how Max had put it -

29/8/06

A lot of it is about timing and luck and the motivation of good coffee – plus I’ve learnt to keep the curtains closed and that way I look only at the screen and think about the story – an old favourite movie often helps – you work it out –

The animals this day are in close-up – a different environment now to that of yesterday – they are kept this time in a small wildlife park; some are tethered, others roam freely in the mud and the pens – did you know a Tapir has been the same for 35 million years, evolution has found the ideal shape and mass for its natural habitat and they are cool with that – still the Peregrine Falcon sticks in my mind the most despite all the Lemurs (bonkers) and the Otters (beautiful) –

If Jesus walked the earth again they’d stick him in one of these and people would pay good money to come watch him circle his pen -

27/8/06 – 28/8/06

In the farmhouse: silence – outside, the rim of the earth across dark stretches of water – far lights echoed in the tide – complete night beyond – we are in here with the full knowledge of the animals without, they present themselves readily by day but now they are just aspects of knowledge waiting to repeat their routines at dawn; occasional silhouettes making their way to the safer ground down by the estuary cross the last pale variants of sky and give the final hints as to their movement –

up in the adjacent tower a set of giant viewing glasses bring many things near (the orange row of lights on the coast road lining the opposite shore; the spinning wind turbines at Workington where the land dissolves; the far stretches of silver mud in the day where the sea-water and land shimmer together) adding to our sense of the remote – by day the tower reveals the close flight of Martins above the farmyard, being exactly at their prime altitude one is filled with a rare sense of proximity as they twitter and urge each other on to greater feats of aerial acumen, they become familiar rather than merely tantalising –

at dusk, Curlews call plaintive on the mud-flats and in the local fields – their pairings camouflaged and delicate except where they stand in long grass and reveal their slow, loping walk and almost ludicrous beak – but theirs is the evocative music of dusk, the one and only sound of place tonight – an aching heart sound, bittersweet, definite and long-lasting – who would want to escape the enchantment of Caerlaverock they ask?

We are witness to young Roe Deer; to gently patient Herons; to the nervous power of a Sparrowhawk; and to the solitary Osprey at the water’s edge, motionless for hours on a vantage post before twilight’s signal gives him grace to move and he flies, matching the waterline East -

24/8/06

It begins with harmonious laughter and a need to belong somewhere, perhaps not geographically but socially. The recent months of relative solitude are peeling back to reveal someone far more raw and undermined than I had thought existed. Someone prepared to act.

St Bartholomew’s Day is alive with wide open skies and fortune. Auspices of the wild.

Mind you, they flayed him alive.

22/8/06

If you’re about to tell anyone let them know it has to be about patience. Can you learn that now at your age? If not, chances are it will not be a pleasant ending. Stations of the cross and all that.

The artificial is sometimes beautiful. I’ve spent twenty four hours in an environment built by modern day kings (whom usually I despise) and realised that they had created something rather special. A realm of peace and tranquillity hidden in the landscape, where red squirrel and pheasants and countless other species are provided for.

At heart however I am realising something with a far greater impact. A core emptiness that needs to be filled/fuelled/eradicated/nurtured. This in me. And I cannot name it or identify it’s source. Perhaps it is the necessary place of faith? Or solace? Or constant agony? I am not sure yet. But it remains wholly dissatisfied with life. I suspect if I delve into it, allow it to become complete, it will take me places, make me curious to find it’s ‘cure’.

21/8/06

Silence is the policy of hope – before judgement, down on one metaphorical knee; a paintbrush (of all things) in one hand and a list of wrongdoings in the other – it’s a moment of chastisement followed by humility followed by contrition of the most naked sort – chances are it won’t ever happen again which would be the worst and best thing in the world combined – still a fool is always a fool (in tarot, card zero) and this one walks with the oddest gait that leads him to gaze perpetually upward, not looking where he is going while his steps lead inevitably to his fall –

A mattress on the floor; a scattering of possessions

20/8/06

Delicacy gone – the rattlebag of bones at the roadside and the organic anger of a couple, two friends lets say, laid waste by bad communication – sleep deprived I wander – each droplet of rain is an ally today, walking with me in a way none have ever done before – these are the thoughts, the exegeses of what will be – these are the thoughts of a rambling idiot who walks and talks alone in the borders, his neck craned to the mud and his galoshes soaked through – he knows only that the lapwings are present, the shimmering estuary pools at dusk, the cloud lace on the fells above and below, the leaden feet and the memory of screaming scaly fuckers leaving their ring-pull and plastic -

19/8/06

Raincheck in the pouring, driving precipitation – an odd thing to do? Not sure. Necessary this morning; the cold, grey light of awareness is picking on me once more and showing me the way to go, if that is possible.

Open the window a fraction, want to hear the water and wipe away the sleep.

Is it possible to be in a perpetual state of war drunkenness? A kind of hangover from the effects of daily bad news? For months – years - now, as I’m sure you are equally aware, the news has been the same. There is no progress in Afghanistan, Iraq, in the supposed W.O.T. (or ‘what?’ as it should be renamed). UK army troop recruitment is up to over 11,000 new young men and women who will be inevitably sent to one of these war zones. Meanwhile, a general in Afghanistan finally uses the term ‘war’ to describe the current clashes with Taliban insurgents and guerrilla groups. This is not even to mention the utter futility of the past month’s war between Israel and Hezbollah.

It’s depressing. It proves only that the conflict nature of humanity is as strong today as it always was. That it is inevitable. Violence and destruction is our cultural identity and it is the example we give to the impressionable and the rising countries and states of the world. Who will, in turn, perpetuate.

Living here, one is subjected to the onslaught of humanity in the most all-consuming ways. Thousands upon thousands of people flooding in on a daily basis, more people than the town can actually cope with. Bringing with them the unbelievable ignorance of the holiday Brit – drinking, shouting, hanging out down the chip shop. Nothing different in their behaviour to being home wherever that may be – and they revel in it. Meanwhile, others claiming to love the country block up the roads with their cars, pumping tons of pollutants into the local atmosphere, then driving out into the hills because they are too scared to actually feel the wind against them. They want their wilderness tame.

All the while, the RAF fly overhead – Jaguars and Tomcats – howling at the fells the constant song of death –

It should all be a bad dream, a fiction, something from which one wakes and looks out of the window and says to oneself ‘no everything’s fine, I can relax’ – no such luck -

17/8/06

What is this nonsense? This consumer bullshit? Apparently Gillette have produced a six-blade razor – we’ve had two, then three, then vibrating ones and now six!! This is madness; trade madness and greed. Not only that these are gimmicks – they don’t work or make your chin any smoother than a single blade razor used properly. Surely any man worth his salt can learn how to shave properly. The question has to be asked who is this razor for? A gorilla about to take up a job in Canary Wharf? An ergonomically obsessive Sweeney Todd?

Maybe we’d all be better of living on the planet Xena? Shameful thing is we’d fuck that one up too.

Signed up to A Year Of Living Generously website in response to this consumer nonsense.

Keyword: RESPONSIBILITY

- - - - - -

The smokers line up under the yew tree in the car park for a quick, lonely fag. Middle-aged men and women with consternation on their brows.

The 'scally' boys and men in their summer shorts and shades and the ubiquitous dog on a leash – usually a Staff or Pit Bull straining and panting – off down the bookies, even here on their holidays.

14/8/06

The conspiracy continues – The Guardian reports today that ‘terror cells’ are mounting training exercises in various national parks in the UK, including here in the Lake District. Apparently groups of up to 20 men are gathering for outdoor training, and are currently being watched by undercover detectives.

How believable is this? I mean to say that I’ve lived here now for three months and if a group of Middle Eastern or Muslim men arrived they would stand out and not go unnoticed. The Asian families that work and run the Chinese restaurants and the take-aways here are already proof enough of that. This is ‘white’ (Christian?) England, believe me. Yes there are some remote areas where you might be able to hide out for a few days but even so, eventually somebody is going to notice 20 inevitably darker-skinned and probably bearded men running around the hills and presumably driving through towns and villages, even stopping for supplies.

Are we to believe the government and the security services? Can we trust their motives? Are they trying to cover their tracks for invading Iraq in the first place and finding nothing more than a sanction-stricken population and soldiers that couldn’t fight and a stupid old man stuck in the ground? And in turn bringing the war to our doorsteps?

13/8/06

Sunday – a final wash of righteousness left over from the Convention appears at the cusp of the river where it charges under the stone bridge, but other than that this one is very different –

It starts with a meteor shower around 2a.m. and a vivid half moon still screaming amid clouds which have the appearance of silver-rimmed animations; there are some folk out watching through bins and teles on the crests of hills overlooking the lake – a few are short on patience and wait maybe ten minutes or so before heading off home again having seen no more than satellites in orbit and the odd shooting star. The real sky freaks wait all night and their patience is well rewarded – heavenly blues and greens where the things enter the atmosphere, streaking through and leaving a stain on the sky and the same on the nervous systems of the onlookers and other inhabitants –

In town there’s blood in the alley behind the chip-shop where a fight took place – they haven’t seen the like for years – and the paramedics had to give aid to the concussed. Arnold blamed it on a loud mouth but witnesses said something queer seemed to come over him, like he was possessed, and he just began peppering the lad with his fists; then he took off in the direction of the river -

At dawn time is held in check, you can see it happen if you’re lucky and the market square revels in silence, lingering in its nostalgia for the quiet months before the onset of the daily invasion – the bin men sing lines from Dire Straits songs: Hey girl your boyfriend’s back - And then the growling begins, like the earth has decided to open up and throw what it doesn’t want to keep back out onto this plane; and on they come, all the hundreds in their cars and their campers and their coach loads and they swell and bloom, eager to consume, eat and destroy; to feast on as much of this place as they can in a day, to do everything in haste and blind folly –

Omens? - a golden retriever stained with green ink in its fur; closely followed by total power cut across town -

And then the Hell’s Angels come – their bikes pressed into the narrow street at the top end of the square and lined up on display outside The Dog and Gun – leather clad peacocks enjoying the attention they garner; the looks of shock and fear from some passers-by and enthralled amazement from others – Angels are always a throwback to a time gone by, approximately 1972, I never see today in them even though their bikes have changed – one Harley here has a built in stereo system that chucks out thunder rock just to keep the image whole – but it’s as if they are theme park additions themselves now; a kind of social joke, they look impressive but there’s not much to them any more, nothing radical (to quote the zeitgeist) –

I think on it this morning, the urgent zeitgeist; walking through this safe haven for the moderate lifers of northern England and the comely Yanks and the Dutch shoppers seeming to be drawn by some magnet that is Keswick; and I have to wonder why these people and the authorities act so amazed when they ask why these young ‘Muslims’ are angry enough to kill innocent civilians etc etc. There’s an odd tone to the reporting of this latest ‘terror plot’, a tone that suggests we are deep down still stuck with a 1950’s reality of what Britain should be; a nostalgia that surfaces in times of crisis which leads us to be so dumbfounded that such actions are being planned or that the terrorists had the gall to procure such resources necessary. A kind of collective Margot Leadbetter voice saying: ‘Oh, how dare they! I mean what have we done to offend them?’ I want to say that the authorities must be dumb if they think they are facing an enemy that won’t try outwitting them at every turn. That is the point of war is it not? And the authorities, at the instigation of President Blair, should be aware of that. We are at war after all, even if we weren’t before the invasion of Iraq. Perhaps his government simply doesn’t want us to panic, that if we keep the traditional stiff-upper lip all will eventually be well. But I believe that they are even kidding themselves. They, the government, have failed to make us more secure; they have failed utterly to do so and have brought the war home to us -

Everyone is asking: what radicalises these young people? That’s the wrong question. I can dig into my own past and in all probability many people’s pasts, including some members of the current ‘leadership’. The history of radicalised youth is not unique to one era or one section of society; and ironically it is a powerful product of ‘freedom’. However, freedom has (always was?) become a state of being for a very limited few. Freedom brings great powerlessness to the underprivileged and the ostracised. This realisation is often fuelled by the accompanying disorientation of early adolescence or adulthood, when one is thrashing around, seeking to belong, to find some foundation for one’s being in a world where things shift all the time and you can’t seem to get a key on it to begin your life. Often one settles on what is most appealing to one’s anti-establishment energy – in my case it was nuclear disarmament, animal rights, road protests and the poll tax; those were issues of the times when I hit my late teens, they affected me so I protested. More importantly they gave me a voice, a reason to be me. Which in some ways is one step removed from the motivations of a martyr. One learns to challenge what one finds offensive and in so doing begins to form opinions which inform the burgeoning adult self and make us what we are -

Words, and their true meaning, are becoming increasingly important. Bush has already changed the dictionary definition of the word ‘freedom’ – it should now read: ‘that state of being declared free by the elected governments of the west provided it conforms to their notion of political, religious and social responsibility’. If we make people afraid of the word ‘radical’ which we are doing by bandying it around in conjunction with the word ‘terror’ we are in danger of losing our right to speak out and to protest - placating the western governments attacks on liberty and freedom of speech, bowing to their ever-increasing paranoia. Orwell must be turning in his grave -

The real question that we should be ask (and government, though they are ineffective when it comes to social problems) and in the media is ‘what makes these men succumb to violence?’ It is not simply religious faith. That is too easy and too dangerous a reason – if we believe that then only persecution can come. No; violence is fashionable. You only have to turn on the news. Violence is perpetrated on young and old alike. It is an acquired belief supported by government hypocrisy and it makes the powerless angry. If someone threatens or harm someone you love then what will be the natural response? You will inevitably be angry and wish to attack them in return. It is the simple cycle of violence. Like I’ve said before, this is not rocket science. And yet the government stands incredulous when it ‘discovers’ so called potential terror threats among us. It is nothing to do with being British and everything to do with cause and effect. Violence gives the veneer of power to the violent; and it is addictive. But of course short-lived; like any addiction it’s need must be placated -

I’m a lucky man. For me the day ends in a beautiful meadow surrounded by swallows weaving through the air in low-flight patterns, switching back on themselves, darting over the nearby river which burbles like all good rivers should. Playing, eating, drinking and socialising with a group of mild-mannered people whose only concern is how to sort out a Frisbee throwing contest. I don’t have to deal with blood on my doorstep. Yet.

10/8/06

So maybe the theorists were wrong after all? Two of them are crying in the street today. Another terror ‘plot’ foiled; risk and security now high in the airports of the country – the country full stop -

We are paralysed by one common factor: foreign policy –

It’s not rocket science. Everyone talks about the shock that the suspects are ‘home-grown’ British Muslims and that there must be something wrong with our society to produce such radical young men. That is a deliberate red herring. Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and now Lebanon. Simple when you see it in black and white -

8/8/06

Conspiracy theorists – and there are many up here, perhaps because it is easy to hide out in the hills, obscured by clouds – some believe Princess Diana was killed because of her relationship with a Muslim; others that 9/11 was a plot by the Bush administration to give fuel to his W.O.T. and thereby give him reason to finish the job his Dad left incomplete a decade ago. The theorists will rapidly tell you these things in bars and cafes; as if they share something that no-one else has ever heard of. But then that is the way of things up here in the rarefied atmosphere of Cumbria – maybe it is too much exposure to the sun, maybe it is simply geography? Bearing in mind the recent evangelist convention here and I begin to see a pattern – a version of the 21^st century US frontier emerging in the wilder parts of this country: rednecks, bible freaks, conspiracy theorists etc. – perhaps this is the millenarian town of the UK, the locus mundi of Armageddon?

However there is one thing that many agree on and can be proven: the recent increase in RAF practice runs over the town. Yesterday they flew at least 7 missions – mostly Jaguars from what I can see, perhaps the odd F-111 – coming in low over Walla Crag and turning sharply north along the river plateau toward Bassenthwaite. It’s a nasty and frightening experience when they do – all peace is broken, you’re left with a dry taste of fear in your mouth at the shock of noise. Sweet Barbara tells me how two collided above the lake 19 years ago – killing one of the pilots ands leaving debris of one plane on the Crag itself and the other at Grasmere some 5 miles south.

Rumours; high energy thespians playing cat and mouse with each other’s emotions. In some ways it was inevitable, in others it’s just simply sad. I keep my mouth shut.

6/8/06

At the end of the day friendship is easily abused when it comes to money, no matter how nice you may have been to someone they always have the potential to fuck you over when their wallet is empty, even when they’ve promised to pay. The trouble is, what suffers in the end is not dignity or humour but history, what you shared – besides something suggested that all his conversations were performances

Some think of Anne of Green Gables as an erotic classic apparently – discuss

Should you always trust your lover to tell you everything? How do you feel if they have been in touch with an ex but not told you? And have not told the ex about you, the new lover; even after let’s say at least 6 months? And what, then, if you are told the ex is due to visit? How should you react? Should you be cautious/jealous/questioning? Or should you just let it go?

The god gatherers are there beneath the bandstand in Penrith in the rain. Mostly shaven-headed men in their thirties and a lone and slightly scared hippie woman with her acoustic guitar; I guess these are not of the Convention – but locals who prefer their praise in this way, singing songs to a dead Cumbrian town of a Sunday afternoon

Each morning this week I’m going to stare at my face in the mirror and try to come to some understanding, to see what other people see, and then clock if it has any effect on me – it could be seen as a form of meditation! The ultimate navel gazing

5/8/06

CLOUD COVER

A face from the past - she's a millionairess apparently

And in the streets too many middle-aged men wearing not enough clothes, pretending they are on holiday in the Caribbean or somewhere like it –

There is always competition; even here – why is that?

Each arc of cloud this morning most definitely has a silver lining – therefore I must assume that we are still at war –

The first moments of wakefulness are like multiple agonies at the moment – the onrush of thoughts is immediate –

There is nothing like being a little drunk and sitting at the edge of the lake gone 10pm and watching the clouds roll in over the hills, covering them gently in threads and scars of white – meanwhile wondering just what is my destiny to be

The Convention 'One World' field is clearing camp – there are hollers and prayers, many American voices saying goodbye – the confederacy makes for home - the skeletal remains of their marquee now something coarse and unprepared against the beauty of the lowest cloud I have seen here, the lake hidden and all the surrounding fells gone -

2/8/06

Three days of isolation; three days staring out of the same window at the driving, all-consuming rain. Enough to drive a man insane

The river swells; the battles still rage

Huge flocks of jackdaws criss-cross the sky above the town, calling as they go – a metallic barking sound

Bored kids play knock-down-ginger on the flats opposite and pretend to chat up girls. One even screams like a girl just for effect

Elsewhere, the lager is in full flow and the racist chants have begun. The Whitehaven Firm are up to no good again. Tonight is their night and they won’t tolerate anything that doesn’t match or equate to home. There is no cause or effect in their world, in their law, things just are

Meanwhile

I am learning to love small things, things that can’t be bought – opening eyes up to details that always made me happy but have gone unnoticed for too long

1/8/06

Castro is unwell. He has handed power over to his brother Raoul - meanwhile Bush sits in front of a huge plastic vista of Miami beaches and gloats. He wants the Cuban exiles to have a home he says. Some of these exiles are right-wing assassins with mafia connections that go back to the 40’s – these are the people that Bush claims he ‘cares for’ – no change there then -

31/7/06

THE CONVENTION

They’ve come from all over the world. From Biloxi, Bruges, Barrow. It might be considered The Wicker Man in reverse. Thousands of Christians come to witness and evangelise and invade. And the lines of teenagers queuing at night for their fix of moral supply. What sickens me is that it seems all so American, all so bible belt – the presentation , the howling ministers, the late night pseudo-concert of Christian rock and the baying for the blood of ‘unbelievers’. Even faith has been appropriated by the US in presentation and style.

An actress tells me that she was sunbathing in her front garden, nothing too louche but she was - yes - in a bikini and she ain’t unattractive if you know what I mean – reading a book, midriff catching the rays and a young man (maybe twelve, thirteen) walking with his parents is told to keep his eyes down Billy keep your eyes down and he does like an obedient dog. I wonder if he wanted to look, to feed those young intrigued hormones? Or was it auto for him to see woman’s flesh as sin?

I would consider stripping naked, covering myself in woad symbols of some pagan origin and run through them shouting: I TOO HAVE BEEN TOUCHED BY THE HAND OF GOD. But somehow I don’t think they’d get the joke.

25/7/06

Too many pained expressions; too many crying faces; too many pleading mothers.

Why does humanity love this agony; almost revel in it?

And they talk of how they will prevail. Churning out the vision of 'freedom' - for whom? The word is meaningless. The dictionary has been rewritten by the neo-cons and the fundamentalists; our language is debased.

They come and they stay. They appropriate and they consume. They are immoveable and believe always that they are right.

Exxon or maybe BP or maybe one of the others, named an oil tanker after Condaleeza Rice. It's true - look it up. Lloyds of London will have her listed. And as it sails out into the arms of 'peace' the hooded mothers will still be waiting in the dark beneath what little shelter they can muster. Staring at the dark wall; praying that they will survive another night.

In the 1980's Ronald Reagan (Raygun to some) traded weapons with Hizbollah in return for hostages and then denied it to the American people. Actually denied it on camera to the American people - he said, to quote, 'my heart tells me we didn't do it, but the facts tell me otherwise' as if it had happened by proxy or else in some dream-vision pre-cursor of his later brain disease, a personal tragedy sure - but after how many others?

Can't we find somewhere in the world - maybe an abyssal plain beneath the sea somewhere - where we can dump all these fundamentalist cowards from both sides of the 'war on terror' - which is turning out to be a war on civilians - and leave them there? Just to please us all however, let Bush go first, closely followed by Cheney, Rumsfeld, James Baker III, and Paul Wolfowitz. Blair will follow anyway and willingly; we won't even need to give him a push. After that send down the now redundant and mythological bin Laden to sing goodnight lullabies to them all. And leave them there while the rest of us try to reconstruct some respect in the human race.

Start by listening to what those mothers want and need most.

- - - - - -

A vision of charging hordes across the fells - Beowulf resurrected? - some Dark Age clash of warriors; noise, the sound of wheeling hawks - the time coming with howls, pre-battle, lusty, berserked - then their blades clash and the hills are filled with the skirmishing, echoing across the lake -

Smoke n' Fire

23/7/06 - Keswick

Concerning

The tightening of the belt; the searching, albeit uneasily, for less - shedding needs, wants and desires -

I keep thinking there is nothing to write about up here - that it is an uninspiring place - but maybe I've been living with my eyes closed -

Let's begin with this observation: this town ain't big enough for all of us - so many people descending on it; the roads are gridlocked with traffic, the streets are crammed with meandering tourists, and Convention evangelists; the air is tainted with car fumes and heat - and this is the country! This is what we have come to think of it - what is the impact of all these people suddenly descending - invading - on this environment?
Under siege - aspects of Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers?

22/7/06

The lights across the lake at night, inviting things, mysterious, far-fetched almost. I wonder why it is that I know I will miss them but not other things here?

Maybe there is something wrong with me; increasingly I find myself drawn to being alone. The only other person I can spend time with is Pol; but even then I still find myself on occasion quiet, enjoying those moments together when the least is necessary - perhaps this is blissful?

Perhaps it is age? Or the environment? Or my surroundings?

I find it easier to relinquish social contact here. To be drawn into stillness and solitude - gaining far more pleasure and sustenance from writing and books than any offer of meeting in a bar or café.

I find myself crying when I turn on the news - the destruction of Lebanon appears to be a crime; the pointless waste of civilian life in the name of the empty war on terror, the new universal excuse for sanctioned harm. I am angry with the state of Israel for becoming a goliath, and for being another US pawn. I am angry too with the radicals who propel the friction. But in all the media, in all the press the blame is laid exclusively at the feet of Hizbollah as being the instigators of this conflict with their kidnapping of Israeli soldiers - but hold on. There was an inexcusable incident on a pleasure beach only weeks ago whereby a Palestinian family where shelled to death by Israeli artillery. Surely this is not an isolated incident in the picture?

It weighs heavily and in the meantime all other aspects of life here seem petty -

17/7/06

Hardest days these; when everything I write appears to be nonsense and life reflects that - a running theme? - the day begins ludicrously early with the usual false start and sleep deprivation - mind bellowing at me and nagging anxieties on full tilt - but still I rise full of purpose, fresh ideas and face the computer; gaze at the words written, re-read and suddenly it all appears to be pap, pointless, useless characters that have nowhere to go yet need to get somewhere, anywhere besides the limbo I'm leaving them in - maybe I am not reaching inside myself enough, maybe I lack courage? - but when this one thing of import betrays me it seems to drag whole foundations with it - all this, they say, is common enough for a creative person, but when you're a nobody this kind of despondency only reinforces the nobody and one's hopes of becoming somebody evaporate leaving you reeling in agony - the only recourse is to believe, have faith, that one day, maybe, there will have been a point to all of it - meanwhile others are saving, pensions are getting larger, people are succeeding -

Then it hits me - some hours later in fact - whilst I'm doing my 'day job' bent to it and tending to the huge garden at the south end of town - and some hope does return - I think of the Arabian Nights; stories within stories, unrelated stories linking with other unrelated stories some deliberately others not so - and this inspires enough for me to laugh off the mood and try again -

15/7/06

Some facts as I understand them:

The Middle East governments and lead-players will never be at peace; they do not desire it and the people will not be given the opportunity elsewhere to get close to it - for over 60 years it was and it still is front page news - Bush, Blair and bin Laden know far more about each other than they lead us to believe, they always did, even before September 11; however, now bin Laden is a spent force as is the mythical 'al-Qaeda', Bush and Blair perpetuate that myth because it pleases them to do so - There are terrorists, there always have been terrorists but there is not a single 'network' working under one umbrella (apart from the umbrella of what they would like to believe is 'faith'), that is the success of our Christian storytellers - It is all about controlling oil (on all sides), controlling the price of oil and ensuring the destabilization of countries that produce it - never forget Bush is a failed oil magnate - sadness is felt worldwide but nothing is ever going to change the way Israel sees itself - perpetually paranoid - because the US will perpetuate that because it knows that condition only too well and it allows for the other myth of the right to defend ones country by whatever means necessary - even as far as the abuse of Human Rights -

There are hundreds if not thousands of inhabitants of this region (Cumbria) of the UK who cannot read, or will not and whose education remains among the poorest in Britain - mostly men - I met one tonight - his name was Al (not sure if that was his real name but that was the one he gave me) and he was about 22 - he wore a dark blue football shirt under a paler one that he kept open, and jeans and sneakers - he was good-looking and kept his thick black hair in good condition - he was tanned too - but when he came up to me, smoking a cigarette, he talked and indeed had the look in his eyes of someone on the offensive, as if the world was always about to take something from him and therefore it always owed him something in return - he stood beside me as I waited at the bus stop, he went over to the timetable but span round too quickly to have read it - without saying 'hello' or 'excuse me' or any kind of disarming introduction he asked me what time the busses were - I told him but I said you'd better check just in case and I pointed at the timetable - he gave me a look that said 'are you fucking with me' and he walked off without saying anything else - social interaction skills at a minimum - later, when the teenage girls had gathered with their McDonald's and were chatting up older boys, when the boy-racers in the car park sat with their engines turned on and were revving them up to a high scream without actually intending to go anywhere, Al came back - he lingered at the edges watching the girls and hawking, contemplating chances - and I nodded and he just looked and so I asked if he'd sorted out which bus he was getting and it turned out it would be the same one I was expecting - he simply said 'Cockermouth one' in a real deep Cumbrian brogue - silence and so I offered him my paper to read to pass the time and he gave me that look again as if I was the craziest person in the world, that or he was the most offended and then I knew he couldn't read, or else had at one time had the skill but hadn't used it for so long he had forgotten how to - when the bus arrived, a small, rattling thing he waited in the midst of the queue and when a middle-aged lady and the man she was with (young, Dutch, carrying a large rucksack) got on he shoved in behind them and got on the bus without paying, went toward the rear and hunkered, low down in the seat so he couldn't be seen -

That bus was like a version of hell - riding into the wide empty night, the bleak hills dark above us - and within, the drunken girls and boys of Penrith stinking of fags and booze and fast-food meat, shouting conversations to each other about getting drunk and how drunk they were, over and over an endless replay of the night's inebriation as if they were stuck in a loop - the stench was overwhelming and the decibel level increased as the little bus struggled its way up and down - meanwhile Al slept like a baby -

When I get back I understand the Convention is in town - a gathering of Christian evangelicals from all over the world here for two long hot weeks of reinforced faith - no doubt they'll be saying their prayers for the 'good' of Israel, ignoring the fact that David has now become Goliath -

Oh, and Vodaphone have appropriated one of the best 'punk' songs of all time for it's new advertising campaign - Another Girl, Another Planet by The Only Ones - it makes me laugh (despite the fact I hate them for using every decent song under the sun for the sake of global sell-out) because I suspect they don't realize the song is a paean to heroin abuse?

14/7/06

One week in Winchester - I recall: sitting fantastically alone in a small cocktail bar on the high street last Sunday eve, two huge screens playing back the World Cup final thinking all the time about how great it would be if Italy won the cup for my Papa - I drank the finest gin in honour and text messages kept coming in from friends across the country all on their seat edges - and then that explosion of joy when they won - from me, from down this street to my surprise as the pub nearest exploded in deep shouts and a few fans ran out into the night leaping and raising their arms in the air, from across the continent -

The odd dry stench of a dying dog in the digs - steering clear of the kitchen where the poor thing flops around unable to hold itself up, a tumour the size of a football sticking out of its side like some damnable insult to the rest of its body - and the beast groans through the night. Why does the landlady keep it alive, why not put it down? Assume it must be painful for her too, something to do with loss and the fear of loss - her daughter is away in Italy for a month, her boyfriend is unable to visit so often because of his three daughters - all this reads in her face, a gentle greyness blooming across the skin around her eyes and onto her cheeks -

The stomach churning beauty of the guitar solo in The Stones' 'Sympathy For The Devil' - hard-edged, bitter-sweet -

Poor great Syd Barrett - the eulogies come in from all over: musicians, friends, journalists, modern pretenders - but the most moving are the blogs of ordinary people reporting how they were constantly awakened by his music, listening to it in gardens in the 60s or else in the clubs in London where the band first played - and his face staring back up from the pages of newspapers; those dark, haunted eyes - and how I recall the strange songs I used to make up with friends and band-members as kind of nods to Barrett: songs with names like The Singing Goldfish, Life's Too Important, PC Juniper the list goes on - saddest of all however is the fact that the local HMV doesn't stock any of his recordings -

And how the features of a place change dependent on one's mood and recent events - last time I was here the whole seemed marred and bleak, tainted with a sense of loss - now despite the quiet of Blackbirds and the density of tourists leading in the low light evenings, I bring with me more of a sense of anticipation and hope and true enough certain things begin to reflect that -

Well for a while at least - two thirtysomething men push each other around outside The Green Man pub as the sun goes down and the cloud of swifts reels low to the cathedral - nearby a natural audio mix of the cathedral bells at evening and a string quartet hired to play for an open air corporate do in the quadrant create a present discord -

Finally on the last evening, the landlady has the dog put down and immediately a sense of balance returns to the house, laughter and the two Italian students also staying are less frenetic in their pre-sleep energy and disruption -

The nearby fields are being harvested already, wide shock of vivid gold and the moon still evident, fading gently but there like a ghostly blemish in the early morning sky -

9/7/06

Travelling again; back to Winchester - length and breadth - on the coach to Penrith, the rain hammering down once more, a group of four twenty-something American boys in so'westers and huge rucksacks and looking like AWOLs from the US Army jabber constantly mid-bus - They look like clean cut Harvard types beneath the rainwater and layer of dirt, roughing it for their gap year - at the rear of the coach an old man coughs overly loud as if making a point; he's riding the bus back and forth, a proper Crow Charlie type in his rural lunacy and bedraggled jumper and hair (I love 'em) - he pushes his cough, forcing it out, like a parrot in tone, grating just behind the heads of these four boys, signaling the fact he doesn't like them; and best of all he plays on a hand-held video games machine that spouts out directions to the player in an accent not dissimilar to the four Americans: 'GO LEFT! GO LEFT! YEAH! YEAH! AAH! - it then repeats an eerie tune, a haunting synthesized piece like a soundtrack to the journey - the Yanks are talking about church - they attended a service this morning as they have in every stop they've made through Cumbria so far, but today they say they were let down; they wanted the 'full church experience' (I hear one say), the intimacy of sermons, the high mountain need - I assume they are evangelists of some kind from the bright revelations they are looking for, nothing humble about their desire for faith - and I gather they are from Los Angeles so linguistically speaking they are ev-Angel-ists!

Is writing fiction, storytelling or is it simply staring back at life through a window at whatever happens to be passing by? Shaven-headed pranksters caught between the reflections of whatever they see without? Perhaps it is just the transfer of language from one to another in order that disparate people can communicate, generate growth, ideas, charm?

Penrith on a Sunday is a time-trip back to what I remember of Sundays in the '70s and '80s - nothing moves except the bartered few making their way to, or arriving at, some bleak eatery or dark steakhouse - the only addition between then and now is the omnipresent McDonalds which despite warnings is still apparently the most popular place to eat on the day of rest - I am aware of charity shop windows like the eyes of the dead, plastic items and mothballs, dusty toys -

I think some more about writing - god knows why this is happening today but there you go - and wonder what purpose I have, and whether a purpose is necessary? Maybe this is a bigger question reflecting my life as it stands at present? Art imitating, and all that. But the joys of the page and the creation therein are with me more often than not these days - I've conquered some discipline in terms of regularity of writing, though my daily word count could still be much bigger - yet a regular pattern occurs which maintains a lack of sustenance: basically, I chop and change from one story to the next with no idea where each is going and just as soon as I've developed one another calls, waylaying me and the previous one is left for a while - this means that a first draft takes a hell of a time to complete -

I end up on the station platform (see what I mean?) - a long, sweeping area of space and possibility; so many people crossing paths, breaking out of old lives, rushing into new ones, bored, excited, tired, alive - filled, in this case, with bright red furniture and pillars marking the perspective, and a deep set flower bed spilling over with wild and tended plants -

The alternative is to surf around in a metaphorical T-shirt under a hot sun humming bars of 'Louie Louie', a glass of something cold at your fingertips - all of it in your tiny, tired mind - the one that just got a year older - keeping boredom and providence at bay - or waiting on the hilltops for the right moment of light, that perfect illumination that will record for eternity the correct nature of place - where old men have to explain their actions for fear of being misunderstood - all the gambling and the drinking, maybe the odd affair under cover of blitz or rocket attack - all the cigarettes, all the boxing, all the unutterable ignorance of a life they chose that did not lead them into learning, to gaining knowledge - their huge regrets carried on a long train through the uplands, weaving its way face on into the driving rain, the low cloud moaning in there, tired and wondering at the weight - a first class ticket on the Regret Express - but one man believes there should still be an opportunity to change minds, unambiguously; to provide mothers with a reason for all the bloodshed and agony; to let harrowed siblings have their grieving time there in the palms of their hands (which in reality should be filled with melted chocolate or the sticky residue of sweets or apples) - meanwhile Walden calls; Conrad suffers in London; Pike has sold all his possessions in an auction, all his effects gone on credit card repayments; and Crow Charlie is left gazing out at the fells and wishing he could get back to 1968 and watch The Who once again - He dreamt of being Keith Moon, with a wide open face and sense of dangerous fun - if he could have had that much opportunity - instead of which he settled for rugged warmth and security in a chair upholstered by his aunt and the hammer that shod horses and fixed fences and which he still carries in his belt loop -

The monochrome view from the farmhouse window, sometimes so simple, so beautiful he wants to weep; at other times so bleak that suicidal thoughts creep in - too much space and life disappearing, passing by -

His mother asks him: 'where is Kabul?'

He tells her and she asks: 'where is Afghanistan?'

He feels cheeky, something in him wants to shock her, scare her; so he replies: 'Not too far away, Mother. Close to Norway.'

He doesn't know why. It is in fact the howling effect of the train passing close by at the top end of the valley - the fallout of grief having this result on him - something sweet in his mouth might placate this feeling -

'D'you suppose a toffee?' his Mother suggests and he nods suddenly feeling like he is ten years old again.

A little later his mother asks why they are fighting out there in Afghanistan.

'Haven't they all had enough?' She is becoming semi-conscious, her monochrome tiredness overtaking her sat there by the unlit fire. Charlie doesn't answer, letting her drift off.

He is thinking of the time he waited for Mary Wakefield at Lancaster station. That night they went to a dance on the hill near the castle in an old Nissen hut decorated with lights and playing The Kinks and The Beachboys. She told Charlie that only a few months before she had boo-ed Bob Dylan while he was on stage in Manchester. Charlie had been impressed. At the end of the night they had promised each other that the following week they would go to the sea in Morecombe Bay or somewhere like that. But once he had got home he realized he would never call her again, he was too scared to see her again for fear of what he wanted to do with her. She telephoned the Post Office at Greystoke two weeks later and left a telegram message for him, it said:

'Hope you are okay stop Are we going to visit the sea question stop Meet you at same Sunday afternoon the twelfth stop Under the clock again stop Mary Message ends'

Brave woman, he had thought then. Still did.

Dad was alive then and he had been impressed with Charlie's luck, but he never let on and sent out warnings via Mum -

It was then that Charlie had foreseen the future and knew he did not have the courage to change it, to move against the inevitable - he looked into the crystal ball of his parent's eyes and stayed - he never mentioned Mary again - Dad 'celebrated' three weeks later by going on the drunk that led him to a shattered arm and fourteen stitches in his head - the beginning of the legacy and Charlie's inheritance - Mary had probably gone to university or to the sea, he never knew and never tried to find out.

Even so, he thought of her many times in the quiet moments like this with Mum asleep and nothing doing for a few hours. His courage had boarded the train and now form time to time aimed for fourteen stitches of a Saturday night falling asleep on the sofa with his mouth wide open and his arms crossed over his chest replaying the generations -

Trying to remain upright in the wind.

'Silly situation isn't it?' His Mum was waking.

And Charlie wished he did not feel so keenly; that he were more stupid, a regular buffoon - that would have been easier on them all probably -

For the killing of sheep, the guts and blood in the mud, the squealing of lambs and pigs were sights and sounds he wished he knew nothing of; how had he become immune to this pain? Mary wouldn't have let him.

It had been the end of that week that Dad was laid up in bed, groaning in sufferance that Charlie had learnt he could talk to crows -

And what of it? Now, what of it?

8/7/06

THIS DAY LAST YEAR

Jodrell Bank distant, watching over climbers here on the peak edge - clambering the soap-bar shaped rock formations patterned red/yellow/green with moss; the edge reflecting itself in every part -

'You are always seeking knowledge,' she says as we ascend - as she does I spot metallic coated beetles gathering on a slab of rock, milling in spirals -

Communication across immense distances both on and off the planet; these white discs dominate the landscape - giant soup tureens, blood cells, plate techtonics, saucers, slabs of bone (scapulae maybe?), robots, vitreous tears standing on opposing stout legs, blisters - all clean, clear, unnaturally so in comparison to the hefty, dark exposed blocks of basalt and granite here, eroded by the action of water and air, by trees and roots - polar opposites sharing space -

They might prove factions, some antagonistic pull, capable of constant battle?

I was going to see her, if I could, straining to get away; the satellites moored between two peaks named Lesser and Greater, both tough to climb. I thought she might be on top of one.

7/7/06

And it seemed that the light changed, grew more insistent; something mixed and dramatic and with great purpose rose up from the summit of Cat Bells toward the sky rather than the other way around - pale it was in the middle but bleeding out to a blue-grey and it parted in some manner so that a beam appeared to illuminate the summit. This as the transistor radio I had perched between two thick branches on an evergreen chimed mid-day. Big Ben, once an everyday vision, now so very far away. As I stood in the garden here, looking out over the lake toward that fell, I remembered the way we had all stood in silence last year, a week to the day after those bombings; how the whole city had stopped and became as quiet as it was here today (despite even the RAF practice run reminding us we are at war). Nothing and no-one moved then as now; Cat Bells and that odd formation of light, changing, outpouring, taken up then down across the hillside with a bitter wind ensuing later - sometimes I like nothing better than to break the mould and remove myself from what everyone else is doing, I'll often seek out solitude over company, but not today - to day it felt keener because of the unified commemorations elsewhere, and most importantly in the city I once thought of, until recently, as my home. I wanted above all to see the faces of my friends there, to look upon them living strong, courageous - with all that might keep them safe -

5/7/06

The actors were locked out of themselves. Doors slammed into their paths - backstage and elsewhere. They missed their cues. Perhaps it was the fault of the oncoming storm caught over the mountains and fells nearby? Forked lightning and thunder knocked out the early evening and ranged on into the night. The actors carried on as they so often do whilst about them the lights flickered and the power went down more than once. But in the bar afterwards they found they could no longer speak to each other in the same amiable way that they had only hours before. They eyed each other suspiciously, drank each others drinks without asking, and ignored the anecdotes and tales of past roles. It was a mess. Egos bled out of ear holes and onto the floor, some in floods of tears that dampened the foyer irreparably, others so simply wounded eventually had nothing left to give and became thespian miasma there on the carpet or chose to run out of the theatre and into the tempestuous night never to be seen again!

3/7/06

What I learnt today:

The afternoon is pale for an old man, a limbo;
Brambles are rampant and primeval; they cut you up, make the skin of your arm a palette for their signature;
Times don't change where the military are concerned, only their equipment does;
Experience counts;
A mother's love might just work wonders;
'Great' Britain is a mythological concept;
Sonic attack exists: Palestinian children suffer stress from the sonic booms of Israeli jets flying over Gaza and deliberately breaking the sound barrier - but, also, you can become politicized too young these days;
I am a lucky man - there is no bloodshed on my doorstep;
Thunder is very beautiful;
Jesus is not always your friend;
The Taliban are not a 'spent force' - if you find a 'night letter' pinned to your door in Kandahar you may not see the following dawn;
Why did no-one design those England World Cup flags you see everywhere on cars to fly at half mast? Will no one ever learn?;
Continuum is a great word to describe the rainfall I've witnessed here for over two hours;
Responsibility is a fact of life - why do so many deny it's existence?

28/6/06

Ever tried killing time in High Wycombe? You can't, because the place is already dead!

The ultra-suburb - desperation and depression being deliberately ignored or hidden beneath the spin of Blair's 'cool Brittania' - but what lies at the core of that message is a poverty of the soul -

What then resides at the heart of England? I ask myself this question as I sit in the bus station at High Wycombe, having traveled so much from town to town over the past few months, exposed to it.

Discontent.

Our history is pock-marked with it: Orgreave. Edgehill. Twyford Down. The General Strike. The Tolpuddle Martyrs. Brixton. Handsworth.

It is the foundation of our culture.

Its current form is suppressed by the ever-growing 'ley-line' network of shopping malls spreading across the country and rising incessantly: flavourless, characterless additions to the landscape. These places try to placate the increasing alcoholism, the hooliganism, the homelessness, and the racism by feeding us a myth of multicultural consumerism without class. In so doing they support the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses territorialism of the suburban nuclear unit, of the great English home as castle to be defended from outsiders and change by the acquisition of the Plasma screen or new car etc etc.

But these places continually fail. Why? Because nothing can cure the discontent at the heart of the English psyche. The need and desire to consume and add and crave for it to be repeated again tomorrow.

I should know.

And like some grand ironic joke the middle-classes (don't kid yourself that they went a long time ago) try to make themselves feel more open-minded, more 'continental' by patronizing the endless stream of cafes and coffee shops promoting a pseudo-European lifestyle of espresso bars and dolce vita in the high street - at the same time bemoaning vocally and in print the fact that Europeans are 'stealing our jobs' - the English wear their suspicions brazenly, they have centuries of experience -

And there we pass out of time as we know it - slowing down into a new timeframe, suburban time which tick-tocks backward and forward between the past and the present with tremendous ease; inch by inch we make our way through scenes in the marketplace that have existed for eons: people looking for a place of easy refuge ending up at some god-forsaken flea pit at the end of town trying to keep warm, aching to be moving on -

In this year, this day Newlands Bus Station

Down among the discarded: fag butts, Lotto scratch cards, shoes, and people - the sickening inverse vertigo of 1970s urban planning hemming you in amid the dark concrete pillars and nicotine clouded Perspex kiosks, all narrated by countless chapters of graffiti - and along thin line of shopping bags at the edges accompanied by tired ankles and faded arses - where young Polish women congregate together to share a laugh and a fag after work, together for fear of the constant snide remarks they get and the crass sexual insults from the bored boys of town (is this the way it's always been, does danger get removed through historical hindsight or do we genuinely care less about others?) - and the huddled hat-finks and rat-finks arrive, the loners and the losers, the edgy-eyed and the genuinely afraid community cared for?

A bombshell - the resonance of plate metal deafeningly echoing every time a bus or coach rolls over it on the way to the exit ramp; the noise is painful, everyone winces in suspension, nervy now the end of day tiredness whiteout has come - waiting, doing overtime as the bus they want breaks down somewhere on the M40 and they are left to second guess its whereabouts: a loner in his late thirties with two small rucksacks plastered to his sweaty T-shirt and only £30 in his pocket for the week and two young girls, Nubians descendents, talking about boys at college and smiling warmly at each other and singing from time to time; young lives still full of hope, capable of vistas of life, leaps and dreams -

Looking down at the dust and I count beneath my seat alone 38 cigarette butts, some chewed clear of filters, others fresher and marked with lipstick - a photographer comes along snapping a few pictures of the decay, some portraits - a woman walks up to him after a while:

You're not welcome here, she says.
What do you mean?
Your sort.
My sort?
Perverts, she says now louder than before.
Wait a minute, he replies, I just take photos - they're -

The woman cracks him in the ribs. She's a mother of three on her way home after her late shift at Tescos. Her action gives allowance to others and so it is that they take it. The photographer, who may or may not be innocent, I don't know, escapes with a bloody nose and bruised ribs -

Ten minutes later a police patrol crawls in, parking up in a side bay; the two officers within the car stare out, scanning the collected passengers, the bread-line if you will and then drives away. They do not get out to examine the six little pools of blood on the concrete, trailing away toward a mock cowboy display in the shopping mall window at the rear of the bus station -

All is quiet now -

There's a prayer on my lips but it won't form into words; it escapes me -

U.S. INTERVENTION IN WONDERLAND

Take 1973 beyond apparition

I touch memory
Funny its
Still sticky to the tips
Like napalm

The door creaks open
Feels like it
May even crumble

The game within was hide 'n seek
Years ago -

Children scurry across a waxed floor
Someone speaks into a microphone
Announces a birthday boy
Joy by the July window
Banquet tables rigged with ice cream
Melting; suddenly

The TV in the corner relays images of My Lai

The Mad Hatter and
White Rabbit lead us
To wonderland

Where traces of ivy and cotoneaster grow
In the road
Ready to be burnt

Then harvested?


County Durham - May 2004

25/6/06 - Cumbria

'Moving, always moving - I am lucky in this', I said. 'Once I thought it might be difficult, frightening, but then you take a step and find it's easier than you thought. But places like this - I indicated the town through the car window - I don't know, they haven't moved in themselves and I find this incredibly sad. They appear to an outsider to be static, forgotten. Or lost. How can anywhere or anyone be so lost in this day and age? So out of touch? Unless, of course it is a desire?'

We pass north to the coast. To Workington. Sunday evening. The town full of red-shirts spilling out of the pubs onto the dry streets, surrounded by flags of St. George. The girls in next to nothing in the hope of post-match sex and the boys stumble and bemoan the poor show of the nation's team, one syllable between them at this stage of the proceedings. There is, always is in Workington, the threat of the volatile - the drunken punch, the bit of bloody fun to pass the time; even better if you can find an outsider to take it out on - and so the hunt too. Groups of ten or so gather on street corners, watching the road like gangs of frontier townsmen bored and looking for trouble, waiting for it to just stumble into town by mistake; the air charged with implicit stares, familial and neighborhood tensions even in the midst of collective celebration - and the Bobbies try to go un-noticed tonight, shirking in doorways in their day-glo yellow vests, wishing they were somewhere else -

Science is how capitalism knows the world; violence is how the ignorant find theirs - On the rim, the coastal edge, shadowing both ends of the town, the surreal rhythmic stretch of two wind-farms - a constant hypnotic turning of the gargantuan blades, like a physical chant trying to calm the atmosphere, disperse the charge at the same time as creating one -

The smell of tar and the millennial mud of the exposed estuary, high full of proteins and salient nourishment that was the source of all living things; the gradual emergence of the sentient, the arthropod and the eventual biped here - waiting for the flood - immobile now, perhaps stuck in the mud? The nuclear age is played out day by day, in the restraint of poverty and under-investment, in the hard edged role of male and female as possession; the turning cars souped up for engine throb and shagging in the back seat; the window gazing and the pram-pushing and the despondent dog-owners necking to watch a young girls arse pass by - and then it strikes you: everyone looks the same here - this is tribal England, and it has not changed since Doomsday, the bloodlines are without alteration, or genetic influx - Man, woman, child - no distinction bar size: the middle aged women all fat, close on obese; the young men sport the same colour hair and the same close crop - and the older men, thirties upward, all carry a faded, tired look in their eyes -

'Do you know these people?' I asked my passenger.

'Nothing to do with me' came the reply - 'oh, wait, hang on . . . .'

Crummock, Cumbria - June 2006

Water Meadow, Winchester - June 2006

Dog Fight, Winchester - June 2006 

16/6/06 - 17/6/06 - Winchester & London

MY RESTLESS ANATOMY

Sitting in the cathedral grounds in Winchester, alone, just a bag of food and about £15 left to my name - a dead ringer for General Pinochet walks past me through the trees, maybe, just maybe…… I ought to shout, to denounce him before these people, mob him, and make him pay -

My head is peeling all over, slivers of dry skin coming away, irritating my scalp - yet I look healthier than ever, they say, in this singular freedom - the evening summer breeze playing about the trees and the tombs - how far have I come? To be sat here like a part-time tramp? Wondering where the next paycheck will come from. In some ways I relish the challenge, surviving on next to nothing, reducing all that I need and carry and eat down to a minimum, alive on the wits edge - in other ways I am beholden to a deep fear of age and insecurity -

- Yet -

I understand and accept I should have no knowledge, leading to learning and thereby (question) to good writing? The necessity of discovery, a cleansing of mind that could be intrinsically altered in the quest for expression; for ideas and knowledge found or learnt on the way not beforehand, in process - a story, ways of being perhaps, symbols? - this I begin to comprehend should be my approach instead of the belief that all good artists (writers particularly) know much before they set out on a creative endeavour; it ought to be the opposite - the chance to widen ones understanding of a subject, human nature, meditating on existence, on images, themes and actions; or further, on the need for love, company, gratification, temptation, desire, passion; on the good and the bad actions taken in search for these things or as a result of these things; of time and solitude; of the sun and the traveler; of the souls' wide open endeavour to maintain light -

An example: the multitude of books old and new laid out in the dim cloister at the rear of the cathedral - a quiet, timeless poetry of place and objects together; a stillness beyond the obvious, working away on a physical and metaphysical plane of course - an evening to learn of space as the best medium to carry one's faith; and between the leaves of a book -

The close blackbirds ignore me where I sit beneath a huge, aged fir tree beside another Hepworth sculpture (echoing that one at Snape); they hunt for worms, gently cantering close and are joined by an officious looking Jackdaw who walks among them disapprovingly - I am become nothing more than part of their daily environment and this pleases me no end - I can be invisible -

Two young women, late teens/early twenties are filming each other on hand-held DV cameras; one climbs the low bole of a cherry tree across the quadrant from where I sit - they are laughing gently, intimately and their laughs echo off the four medieval walls -

What is a vision and, by extension, a visionary? Is it a reactive state or a proactive one? Is its fuel exclusively without or within? I'd like to think it was always the latter, in the natural world (whether by another extension that includes the man-made or not I am not sure) - Oliver's Battery - Leonardo's Sycamore Helicopter - Oppenheimer's Basic Destroyer - all found without, external observation consistent with dreams -

- Like

am I living a lie? People have come to think of me recently as a modern day Dick Whittington (they told me so in Suffolk and here now in this deadly county) - a bag on wheels and a laptop, carried hither and thither across country - maybe I am if you put it that way, though it seems too romantic to be the case because my movements are out of economic necessity (I reply) - but didn't Whittington go to London looking for gold (they answer swiftly)? -

The camera girls come near, standing in the shadow of a dense, succulent tree over by the north wall - they are taking more intimate pictures of each other now, the lens close up to their faces, their eyes - maybe they are falling in love? First lovers each? And these images are records of this new emotional place they find themselves in? Recorded for posterity; either to be erased in time when it all goes sour, or else kept as testament to those initial days of lust and excitement when they look back years hence - still giggling, still testing the branches, still laughing in the religious shadows of a cathedral - like it was only yesterday -

The calm navigation of their souls - the meditative steps inside -

And in continuation, I wake at dawn the next day, collecting myself and my belongings in a room I've slept in for only three nights, with its small wooden puppet theatre in the corner dusty but well loved once; and trundling the bag out of the door in silence so as not to wake anyone in the house I see as I go the quiet shadow of the Japanese girl I'd been told rents a room but whom I have not met at all, now crossing the threshold at this early hour with a small china bowl before her, and a red tear of tiredness in her eye - and the bright morning, a glimpse of a fresh view through a sloping, green corn field toward hedgerows and copses with the early mist hanging low in the fold, collecting heavy - nobody else witnessing it but me on that road, this clarity of the new day with its wide open possibilities, its ready anticipation (even though mine is fairly well planned) -

Carrying on up the hill I recall the things I learnt about old friends last night - new proposals of marriage in Northern Ireland; an old flame now living with a German composer in London; recent friends returning to Aldeburgh already to watch performances given by people they know; A.F. has returned from a restorative trip to Greece where he read Proust; PC is in France for the christening of a friends baby; and my family (nieces, brothers, sisters-in-law, aunts, parents) are all well met in northern Italy - that is good - important - I have deep affection for them all -

Bruce Chatwin (a nod to him in this entry's title) reflects on the importance of the nomad in the culture of past societies (particularly those on the steppes of Russia and Mongolia) - oftentimes they were the herders of vast numbers of horses or cattle, and were connected to (or were themselves) the settlements shaman - the conjurers of space and time, of visions beyond the known, the witnesses to what was over the horizon - yet also the healers and advisors, totally practical, the watchers of the villagers flanks, and bearers of change or alarm - without the nomads the 'settlers' would not have survived - As I fell asleep last night my journey today played itself out in my mind - it ends (or begins?) with a kind of void waiting to be 'filled' - I think it was connected to this urge for discovery and learning I mentioned earlier and seems to be a result of my recent restless existence - the void is not empty however, it is full of questions, anticipation - it is not taxing or confusing, it is surprisingly quiet and restful, a musing place! Maybe, to paraphrase Marguerite Duras, it is 'the writer's unknown'? Finally, I am out on the pilgrims trail, outside my tribe (my family) trying to report back as often as possible, having to be patient, imagining myself with them - and so I slept -

And after all can we help the genetic programme? Or even dare to attempt to change it? What would be the point? If one has a genetic disposal toward restlessness can nit be fought, reconditioned? Or must it be allowed to take one where it will? Unbound. Or is that just a vision of romanticism that is totally impractical in this age? Perhaps it is now decreed that wanderlust must be kept in check in all aspects of our lives - free only to be expressed in so far as which channel we switch to or which websites we allow ourselves to visit - Yet there is so much benefit to be had; a searching quality to life that is important; a kind of open-eye form of living that moves out into the day, constantly hunting for information and inspiration, and that brings contentment, a rare commodity these days -

I have come to believe in omens on this journey; in objects found that have a great deal of power even if they are only conjurers of memory - you must still be careful with them, they are both delicate and strong - wood especially - the power of natural forces upon it (the tide, wind, movement, abrasion) allows it the opportunity to become different in character given time, it will retain traces of its past but is irrefutably altered for the better - so it is with the allowance of wanderlust -

I am reminded of my Italian grandfather's long walk home in 1944/1945 from a prison camp in Germany all the way back to Piedmont in northern Italy, over the Alps!! I never met him, he died penniless 35 or so years ago, but his story of endurance and subsequent suffering has taken on a huge importance and significance to me since I first learnt of it - outside of the evident tragedy inherent in it, I believe it set up a form of 'learnt' nomadism in my family (and in many people in the subsequent post-war generations e.g. Kerouac et al) that has been passed on - my father moving across Europe, then on into the UK and when I was growing up we move again and again, leaving my 'rootless' and therefore perpetually restless (a good thing) - perhaps tragedy, mutated and relearned, has become joy? Balancing the past in its own small, yet significant, way?

One skill I have never learnt is the ability to sleep upright, say sat in a chair in a railway station - a useful art for the traveler - You do have to love a city café for its egalitarian invitation to all (including the tramp who is sleeping upright in that chair over there at the edge of the patio) - regulars, irregulars, passengers, stay-at-homes, visitors, thinkers, lovers, and poseurs - they come and they partake in good surroundings - some never want to leave, after all, if the café is good life becomes so much easier -