my life as a artist
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real tennis is a funny game
Thursday 22nd November 2007 1:28 AM
England 2 Croatia 3
Although England failed to deliver tonight, my local Indian takeaway, the Crown of Asia, didn't. I knew formation would be vital, so I started with the rice up front, sag aloo on the left, cauliflower bhaji on the right, pickle in the middle, and like England, a blob of yoghurt at the back.
After fifteen minutes it was more or less all over. On second thoughts, it was less all over, and towards the end, it was more all over. I rolled myself a soothing cigarette, (in deference to international harmony, using products from more than one country), and noticed the legend on the takeaway menu. The corner of the rizla packet was obscuring three letters, so it said 'Crow Asia', and underneath it said 'we deliver'
'At the end of the day, Gary, it's night', said Steve Maclaren afterwards. 'We only needed a draw, and with the luxury of hindsight and tactical awareness, I think we would have been more solid, and done great, with rice at the back, and blob of yoghurt out on the left, possibly mixed with some chopped red onions. I thought we really missed the crispy texture of Wayne Poppadom tonight, but at the end of the phone, Gary, we got what we deserved.'
Posted 1:28 AM | 2 Comments | Permalink
time and stars
Monday 19th November 2007 11:31 PM
Saturday was my birthday. I've had a good innings so far, and after a slow start, and despite a few reckless swipes before lunch, (and a dropped catch on 42), I've managed to get to 51 not out. In the fading light I can see the inexorable black and white scoreboard of eternity, and though the idiot click of digits disturbs my mind, my heart is a pavilion of peace.
I share my birthday with Rock Hudson, Martin Scorsese, Gene Clark, Peter Cook and Jonathon Ross. It's a testament to the veracity of astrology that I'm identical to all of them, except Jonathon Ross. 'The stars impel, they do not compel' and the fact that I'm not like Jonathon Ross is down to my own personal efforts towards spiritual salvation.
Yesterday, I had a birthday party at mine. As I've only got a porta-potti, on the invitations, I respectfully advised people to have a dump before they came, which my mum thought was really classy. The idea was to have a tarpaulin stretched between two caravans, and have huddled, oppressed people drinking soup round a brazier, which I thought might give proceedings a picket line/soup kitchen/apocalypse survivors sort of feel. However, intense swirling rain forced us into the great, but really small, indoors.
Despite, or maybe even because of, the enforced intimacy, the party went quite well. Due to the changed circumstances, I had the onerous task of uninviting Jimmy the donkey and Molly the pony. It wasn't just the matter of space, I explained to them, but the fact that recently, Jimmy has really let his personal hygiene slide, and I felt that in that crush, Molly might feel socially awkward.
I drank much pink, fizzy stuff, which turned my brain into pink, fizzy stuff, and this morning, into pink, fuzzy stuff. By way of consolation my mother said, ' Fuzzy-wuzzy was a bear, fuzzy-wuzzy had no hair, so fuzzy-wuzzy wasn't fuzzy, wuzzy?', which was sweet balm indeed.
This afternoon I got a phone call from an advertising agency, asking me if I wanted to become the face of Marks and Spencers for 2009. I told them I'd have to have time to think about it. On the one hand, I'm worried that doing adverts might seriously compromise my artistic integrity, and go against everything I sit down for, but on the other hand, when I see how nice Brian Ferry can look in a pair of Saint Michaels, easi-stretch sensible-trousers, available in beige, burgundy and quiche, it really makes me think. Should I sacrifice my Blakean quest, to realise that true art is true religion is true science, in exchange for a potential lifetime's supply of underpants?
Last night, before I went to sleep, I had the realisation that Russell Brand and Nigella Lawson are the same person.
Posted 11:31 PM | 5 Comments | Permalink
bang
Tuesday 13th November 2007 11:33 PM
This morning, when I went to the newsagents to buy a kilo of Guardian, Greg-behind-the-counter was having a heated debate with Mrs Blackmore, about the big bang theory. Greg, who's a big man, (and generally prone to largeness), was getting quite red in the face, and had started inter-fucking-spersing words with profanities.
Mrs Blackmore, a leathery, hard-faced woman in her late seventies, was not intimidated, and besides enthusiastically positing that the cosmos was the result of a big bang, fifteen billion years ago, she was also demanding her copy of the Daily Mail and a walnut whip, in a fierce, phlegmy, high-pitched, rattling voice, not unlike the sound a two-stroke motorbike being thrashed around the estate.
Although enjoying the smell of burnt oil, and the cut and thrust of conflicting creation myths, I was getting impatient to make my purchase. The Guardian was getting so heavy that I'd already had to jettison Work and Money.
'Excuse me' I said, in my calmest voice, 'My mum says that the laws of angular momentum prove that the universe is isotropic'
There was a brief silence. 'Why didn't you say so before, young man?' said Mrs Blackmore, her voice softening, and her now smiling, leathery face twinkling. As she left the shop she said 'Bang goes my theory!' and laughed.
Afterwards, Greg was so grateful that he said I could flick through the sports section of the Yorkshire Post without having to buy it, to see if there was anything about Huddersfield Town. Before I left, he asked me for some advice about his hair. At the moment he wears it very close cropped, like a Russian weightlifter, and he said that he'd been thinking of having a different style, something that was softer and spoke more of his inner feminine.
I suggested that he grow it longer, and have a power bob, like Anna Wintour, the legendary US editor of Vogue magazine. His eyes shone as I showed him an example from the fashion section of the Guardian. 'It's a lot of maintenance, but I think it'd really suit you.' I said, leaving him the section to look at later. By the time I left, the Guardian was manageable enough to carry home.
In the interests of social critique, over a saucer of soya milk, I read the Charlie Booker column. I recently heard him introduced on a radio 4 programme as 'the cleverest person that Ian Hislop's says he's ever sat next to.' Greg says that the laws of angular momentum prove that the uni-shagging-verse is iso-fucking-tropic.
Posted 11:33 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
the wanderer returns
Thursday 8th November 2007 9:01 PM
Hello Mr and Mrs Blogwatcher! Greetings to you, your gracefully aging parents, and all your beautiful sons and daughters! I have been away, with the poetry, the art, the tide and the fairies, on the lost shores of Aldeburgh, where Suffolk loses its toe-hold, and slips into the sea.
Aldeburgh's charming oddness and sense of singularity was enhanced and echoed by my inability to get a signal for my mobile phone or the internet connection for the lap-top. Sometimes it was like being in an Orwellian sci-fi novel called '1957'.
On my first night, I ate in the restaurant that seemed to offer the best vegetarian option. However, it turned out to be one of those nouvelle 'excuse me waiter, my plate's dirty' cuisine sort of places, so the three-bean wrap I ordered was exactly that. When the waitress brought it over, I thought she was being like a wine-waiter that pours you half an inch as a taster, so after I'd eaten it, I called her over, and said 'That's fine, I'll have some of that.' Instead, she brought me a bill for sixteen pounds, so I ate that instead, but it tasted a bit bitter and overcooked.
On Thursday night, the joint launch of the festival and the exhibition was held in the Peter Pears gallery. I got slightly drunk on red wine, and sold four text-pieces to a golden Labrador, called Tim. On Friday I stayed in and counted my dog biscuits.
On Saturday afternoon, I did a gig with Owen O'Neill, an Irish poet and playwright that I used to do comedy gigs with fifteen years ago. Aldeburgh's attentive, genteel atmosphere was very different to those days, and I'm sure that Owen found their murmurs of respectful appreciation infinitely preferable to the comedy club's usual, cheery shouts of 'Fuck off you ginger twat'
On Saturday night I had my solo gig in the Jubilee Hall. It went very well, except for a slightly strangulated laugh after I said, 'I asked the woman in the jewellers shop if they sold crucifixes. She went into the backroom, and after a short while said 'Do you want a plain one or one with a little man on?'
On Sunday, before I took the exhibition down, I sold another three paintings. ( I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, and cried 'A sale! A sale!') Such are my new-found riches, that as soon as I got back to York, I bought a bottle of maple syrup, which I blended with lime juice, fresh herbs, garlic, ginger and chilli, and savoured the sweet tang of success.
Meanwhile, outside, under the duvet of night, there are moans and rustlings, as the trees are being undressed by the ravishing wind. Mucky buggers.
Posted 9:01 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
tomorrow I
Monday 29th October 2007 11:01 PM
Tomorrow I'm driving down to Aldeburgh to set up the exhibition. Outside the caravan, Jimmy the donkey is guarding a hired, bright red Volvo estate, packed to the gunnels with art. Obviously, it's the Volvo that's loaded up with art, not the donkey. In the past, I have used Jimmy to deliver small unframed pencil sketches within the York area, but in this case I think the Volvo's more practical.
There are going to be thirty-four slices of art in this multi-grain, exhibition loaf, which was baked in the rayburn of my soul, using paper and oil pastel flour, with my imagination as the yeast, quickened by life's sugar. When it's up in the gallery (where the girl I love is), it'll be fresh out of the soul-aga, and should be still warm. May all the visitors be butter.
This one's called 'Houses playing out in the street'
Posted 11:01 PM | 3 Comments | Permalink
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