my life as a artist
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blackburn ravens
Saturday 4th August 2007 7:53 PM
There seems to be some confusion about the maximum length of comment that it's possible to post to this blog. Above the validation box , who's magic word today is 'grow', it says 'comment length 0/500'.
Miss Anthrop, in a finely crafted poem, says that she only gets maximum 250, and as this makes my promise of 500 a hollow sham, I'm obviously a Tory. She then tells me to sort it out, with an exclamation mark. I like to think of her as firm and brisk, but essentially friendly, but not as friendly as her brother Phil.
I decided to ask my web-site provider what was going on. Pi internet is basically an old couple called Kate and Sidney Pi, who run the business from a tumbledown, overgrown cottage, that clings like petrified moss to the wind-slashed slopes of Ben Mor Assynt, in North west Scotland. Surprisingly, they don't do e-mail, they haven't got a phone and maddeningly, they never reply to letters, so on Thursday afternoon I drove up there in a hire car, to ask them about the comment length.
Kate and Sidney were very welcoming as usual, and they shared with me their simple traditional breakfast of porridge and deep-fried battered oat cakes, served with a huge, earthenware jug of chilled Irn Bru. Sidney, who's generous to a fault, sometimes likes to slaughter a goat when someone comes to makes a web-site enquiry, but I told him I was on one of those new-fangled, goat-free diets, so we had another glass of Irn Bru instead.
The lack of pitiful howling from an eviscerated goat created a gentle lacuna of quiet space in which to discuss comment lengths. Eventually we managed to pin-point the source of the confusion. Where it says 'comment length 0/500', it doesn't actually specify what the 500 things might be. 500 pages? 500 lines? 500 novellas? 500 paragraphs? Most people, including myself, assumed it meant 500 words, but with the help of a couple of unusually bright, local shepherds, we worked out that it means 500 characters, with a space counting as a character.
So there you have it Miss Anthrop, I've sorted it out. (!) I've also asked Kate and Sidney if they could extend the comment length, and I think that today's magic validation word of 'grow' is their way of telling me that they're working on it.
There were two other comments on Wednesday's blog. D. Lightedwithanywin wanted me to comment on Huddersfield Town's creditable 2-1 win over premiership high-fliers, Blackbird Rovers. A. Pedant lamented this encouragement, and reckons talk of football, with regards to soul nourishment, is a bit pappy, and not solid food, and is therefore something to be weaned off.
On the whole I agree, but sometimes, when your mind is mewling like a motherless child, a quick blog about Huddersfield Town can be comforting. A. Pedant would do well to remember that to some of my regular readers, talk of Andy Booth is breast milk.
A. Pedant writes that they think I might have been weaned off football, but the fact is, there hasn't been any for two months. It all kicks off, in earnest, next week. Premiership, Championship, League 1 and York and District over 35's. It's more or less the same set up as last year, except that John Terry has negotiated himself a pay rise, up to £135,000 per week , and York Corinthians over 35's have put their subs up to a fiver.
Posted 7:53 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
a foreign reader writes
Wednesday 1st August 2007 11:46 PM
A foreign reader writes 'What does 'chavvy' mean?' When I say it refers to a chav, who's an uneducated, uncultured youth with a leaning towards anti-social behaviour, I suddenly feel a bit judgemental and Daily Mailish, ( for foreign readers, the Daily Mail is a right-wing English newspaper, known for it's intolerance of interesting people) but that's what I was getting at.
I feel strangely excited by the idea that I might have foreign readers. Maybe you're from Mozambique,(muli bwanji!) and you're reading this blog on the shores of Lake Malawi, sitting on the smooth sand, underneath an impossibly bright canopy of stars. Maybe your sat in the stygian gloom of a sombre Swedish forest, seeking solace from your grief at the death of Ingmar Bergman, (Skol!) ,who's greatest films were 'The Seventh Seal' and 'Flipper', mysteriously comforted by the fact that today's magic validation word is 'sad'.
There is no such thing as a foreigner, they're just friends you haven't met yet, because they live abroad and often don't speak English, and there's millions of them, and to be honest, what with pottering and crosswords and stuff, you just don't have the time. (You're too busy thinking about your baby, and you aint got time for nothing else)
,
Posted 11:46 PM | 4 Comments | Permalink
living in tv times
Tuesday 31st July 2007 2:56 PM
On Saturday night, just as I was getting ready to go out, I turned into a werewolf (again), so I decided to stay in. I thought it must have been the big moon, so I got a few tins of dog food in and watched the telly, until it waned. There wasn't much else I could do. I thought it might be poetic to play a Howling Wolf number on the guitar, but my vicious, hairy claws kept breaking the strings, so I did 'Do the Do' on didgeridoo, instead.
I find it difficult to socialise when I'm a werewolf. I feel self-conscious about my hairy face and big ears, and when I feel people are judging me, I can get quite aggressive, so I think it's best to stay in. When I'm in that state, muesli just doesn't do it for me, not even Alligator's organic deluxe with added walnuts (and it sticks in my fangs), so I eat dog food as a source of safe protein. Between the hours of midnight and 3 a.m. the telly is a great source of vicarious violence, and I find it useful for engaging my lycanthropic urges until they abate.
Last night I watched a fascinating documentary about an illegal immigrant from India, living in a small town in the United States, where all the inhabitants have four fingers, and are, for the most part, yellow. As the manager of the local Quickie Mart, his sense of cultural dislocation was expressed delightfully. 'Who needs the infinite compassion of Ganesh, when I can have the cold, staring, dead eyes of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman?'
It might appear from this blog that I spend a lot of time watching television, which is not really true. The only programmes I deliberately tune into are The Simpsons and Match of the Day. If I'm a werewolf or feeling uninspired, ill or simply brain-dead, then I might do a bit of late-night channel-surfing. It's as though the planet is a drowning man, and the telly is his life flashing before his inner eye.
The best description of the telly that I've ever heard is from Romeo and Juliet (I think). 'What light through yonder window breaks? It speaks yet says nothing.'
Posted 2:56 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
innit
Sunday 29th July 2007 9:23 PM
'I experience the simple consciousness of only God in everyday life, innit'
'No you don't!'
'Yes I do!'
'Well if you do, I bet you drift in and out of it. I'm like so totally in it all the time'
'No you're not!'
'Yes I am! And what's more, sometimes I go beyond it and experience the eternal preluminous void prior to all manifestation, innit'
'I bet you don't!'
'Yes I do!'
'Prove it!'
'No'
'Why not?'
'I've got a bit of a cold'
'Do you want to try one of these Locketts? They're rock-hard lumps of artificial sugar, with a honey-flavoured medicated gloop in the middle. They'll get rid of it in no time.'
'Thanks. Mmm! Splintery!'
'This preluminous void that you mentioned, did it last very long?'
'Yeah, it was eternal, innit'
'Wow! That's ages…… I bet there was loads of well good things to look at, though!'
' No, it was prior to all manifestation, innit'
'Wasn't it a bit boring?'
'No, it was really wicked'
'Has your cold gone yet?'
'No'
'Do you want another Lockett?'
I overheard this conversation this morning, on the bus, on the way to Acomb. It was two young men, who to be honest looked a bit chavvy. I find it reassuring that, despite the wide availability of electronic media and the myriad distractions of the twenty-first century, the youth are still interested in exploring the outer (inner) limits of consciousness. Innit.
Posted 9:23 PM | 3 Comments | Permalink
a bit of bitty blog
Wednesday 25th July 2007 11:26 PM
Hello everybloggy,
I'd like to thank those of you who've left comments on this blog. Two of you, (It could be more, 'disappointed of Yatesbury' might be a collective) have pointed out, quite rightfully, but a little too bluntly, that George Melly is dead. I knew that, and I knew that you knew that, and I expected you to expect me to know that too, but now that I know that you thought I didn't know, I realise I should have made it more obvious that I knew. It was an attempted literary device that failed, and I'm sorry if it's led to any mistrust on your part.
'Disappointed of Yatesbury', after the Melly farrago, now suspects that all these blogs are pure invention. Only Harry Potter and News at Ten are pure invention. These docu-blogs are cyber-info-tainment, real observations, using real words, based on real events, that actually happened, in my mind.
D of Y also points out that the magic validation word, (a comment box filter to stop me being offered Viagra) is a sort of I Ching. Today's synchronous offering is the word, 'touch', conjuring up images of madness, genius, eroticism and football pitches. I don't know about you, but that really says something to me.
(Even though this is only a new paragraph to you, to me it's a brand new day, and twenty-one hours since the last sentence. It's not essential for you to know this, but I want to be honest with you because I'm trying to win back some of your trust after the George Melly debacle. This frank admission isn't really part of the loose narrative of the blog, so I've put it in parentheses, and as far as you and I are concerned, the only thing that's changed in our cyber-world is the magic validation word. It's now 'feed')
'Schadenfreude' is one of those fabulous german compound words that means taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune, and today I think I was guilty of it. I'm not proud of the fact that a small, wry smile flickered on my lips when I heard that the floods had reached Henley-on-Thames, or that I punched the air in exultant triumph and arranged a celebration dinner.
Although a boorishly northern and small-minded thing to do, it comforted me to know that those who inhabit lavishly furnished rooms, just off the corridors of power, first left, second door on the right, and think that Hull and Toll Bar are ship parts, are more likely to have heard of Henley-on Thames, and therefore more likely to shift their lardy bottoms and start stitching strategic sandbags.
News at Ten reported that when the emergency services were handing out bottled water to the residents of Henley-on-Thames, many of them were refusing it, because it wasn't Perrier.
As the dead brown water of entropy laps onto the donkeyless beach of disintegrating order, and Victoria Beckham wages jihad in Afghanistan as Osama bin Laden makes it big in L.A.,I can hear the inexorable, idiot tick of the doomsday clock, which is on the wall, just below the writing. When I hear that sound, I like to make a refreshing pot of orange pekoe China rose petal tea and eat seven of my mum's lemon and ginger biscuits. I'll just go and put the kettle on.
Posted 11:26 PM | 6 Comments | Permalink
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