my life as a artist
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wales is a small country roughly the size of wales
Tuesday 3rd July 2007 11:35 PM
After a daring dawn escape from the cosmic miasma of the Glastonbury festival, my brother and I found ourselves in a Little Chef eating egg, beans and chips at 8:30 in the morning. We had little napkins and everything. After a nice cup of tea I went to the men's room and washed the tent.
I took my specially spattered mud-brother to pick up his car, which he'd left outside my old mate Richard's house in the magnificently named village of Temple Cloud, then I boldly set the Mazda on course, at maximum warp 7, for planet Mid-Wales.
Having successfully scoured star-system Bristol for an elusive co-op bank to put my winnings in, I manoeuvred my kinky machine towards the M5 super-space highway. It took nearly an hour to get there, due to the heavy rain and a slight skirmish with some klingons in Westbury-on-Trym.
As soon as I'd established my craft in the super-space highway slow lane, I lit a cigarette and engaged the on-board music facilitator. Outside the cold rain was falling, but inside, diaphanous curlicues of warm smoke were rising, enwreathing and caressing the sweet bubbles of honey that were popping from the throat of Smokey Robinson, who was now really, really little and living in a box in the dashboard.
Herefordshire and the Borders were an elemental theme-park, the main attraction being water. Forced onto debris-strewn and flooded B roads by the closure of the A49, the journey became too bitty and fractured to continue the Star Trek imagery. This was Stingray land! (Stingray was a documentary on the telly that I used to watch as a kid, about a suppository-shaped car that could travel underwater and in the air)
Five miles and twenty thousand Olympic-size swimming pools of rain beyond Clun, I took a sign to Beguildy, and then put it in the boot before anyone saw me. Having committed this pointless and motiveless crime I turned off the B road and onto an F road which turned into a 'Gee, where's the road?' The switchback across the valley bottom appeared to be under two foot, or is it feet?. Foot, feet, it doesn't really matter does it? I should have stuck to foot, like chewing gum, and even though it might have been grammatically incorrect, at least I wouldn't have destroyed the narrative tension like I've done now. If it's all right with you I'll start that sentence again, OK?
The switchback across the valley bottom appeared to be under four and a half million fluid ounces of water, and as the panting Mazda thrust its firm bumper into the yielding flood, the undercarriage and side panels gave an involuntary shudder of fear and revulsion. Bow waves of brown water were breaking in spumes of vengeance over the black bulging bonnet of the Mazda, and as she plunged deeper, and ever more committed, into that dark watery hell, I heard my mobile bleeping with a message.
Still gunning the Mazda in first gear, I reached across to the passenger seat to pick up the mobile. The huge body of water was trying to force me off the road, and as my powerful right forearm, sculpted from granite and forested with manly furze, wrestled with the steering wheel, my muscular yet sensitive left hand manipulated the fashionably small keys of the mobile. It was a message from my friend Pat, whose cottage I was hopefully going to stay in that night.
It said ' Don't take the sign to Beguildy'
'Botty, busters and wee wee' I cursed childishly, under my breath. The deathly water was now up to the bottom of the windscreen and I could feel the tyres struggling to keep a grip on terra firma. I struggled frantically for Stingray imagery but all I could remember was the theme tune. Lustily I sang. ' Der, der, der, der der, der…….' but it wasn't doing any good. As the last strip of light disappeared from the windscreen I felt the car starting to float……
I'm off to bed now. I'll tell you what happened on Thursday... but don't worry, because everything turned out fine. (again)
Comments
Les, please excuse Rory, he is getting old and got confused between Stingray and Supercar....what did you play with in the bath after you discovered girls?
Posted by hugh.jarse@somewhere.com , on Wednesday 11th July 2007, 12:47 PM
Stingray couldn't fly.It was a submarine vessel only, a bit like our nuclear subs only it was made of plastic.I used to have one which I used to play with in the bath but this was before I met girls.
Posted by Les Miserable , on Friday 6th July 2007, 7:13 PM
I am rather upset that your word count did not allow me to add the final word "chest" to my previous comment. In fact my mascara ran with the tears and I now resemble a dwarf dracula.
I am also concerned that if this comment appears at the top
Posted by Barbara Cartland , on Wednesday 4th July 2007, 1:42 PM
I begin to understand the true intent behind your blogs.
By painting yourself (and don't get me wrong - by no means incorrectly) as strong yet sensitive, with a GSOH (as they say in Private Eye) and a quirky edge, it looks like you are intent on the
Posted by Barbara Cartland , on Wednesday 4th July 2007, 1:19 PM
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