That Hat

There's a Europe-wide shortage of coaches-with-beds-instead-of-seats. But we're here, and the sun's everywhere and the grass is going mental. Half the kids were ill on the first day, and some of the adults too, and Jackson Pollock had been through the bogs and there was a quarantine-the-infected / sanitise everything situation. It was save yourself for a while and the pale were shunned, along with the coughers and the sneezers and the woozy.
Everyone is a fruitball, a batcake or a sneaky nut. There's plenty of rock to go up. So "things" are "going well". Flip-flops are going on frequently. It's the end of week one and everyone's having a bit of a drink so they can get to know each other and maybe later their faces can get to know each other's faces or the floor. I am on stay-sober-in-case-terrible-things-happen duty due to being late to morning meeting due to massive clock failure due to unnoticed battery outage. The number one rule is don't be late because this is what happens. It's a bit of a shame as I like the occasional twenty drinks. But I have the secret cashew stash and the Belgian chilli tortillas. The results are in and the winner is yourself.
The site is between two rivers and next to an airstrip for all your smuggling needs. If you were going to smuggle something it would be bacon. The doom-cloud has gone, so don't delay. I can send you the co-ordinates, or you could just keep an eye out for a hundred and twenty tents and a lot of exceptional behaviour.

The Gone Tomorrows

Lucy suggested writing a story on a beer mat. I went to a pub. There were no beer mats. I read most of Bill Drummond's book $20 000. It was good. I drank three beers. The man next to me at the bar asked if the book was good. I said it was fucking brilliant. We talked about the KLF and burning a million quid, then nailing ten thousand quid to a board and framing it and selling it for more or less than ten thousand quid, whatever it is they did. We both were a bit blurry on the specifics. But admirers. I didn't tell or ask him about stories or beer mats. He was very friendly or deranged. I was very friendly or deranged also. The bloke from Elbow was next to us at the bar. I bet he's written a few things on beer mats. Maybe that's why there were none. I didn't ask. He's none of my business.
If a beer mat was there I would've written something tight and delicious in one take with no crossings-out, then left it to get soggy and crumpled, and within a week I'd've forgotten exactly what the words were and I'd spend the following year trying to recapture them, and if anyone asked so what do you write? I'd say beer mats, mainly, you know, it's a bit niche and best viewed through the bottom of a glass.

Pick Up Nuts and Pop To The Pound Shop

The word scranige rhymes with damage and vanish, sort of, and means food and twelve years ago it was everywhere. We shortened it to scran, or fat scran for when there was more than you could eat, which for me was all the time since I used to have a shrew's bladder instead of a stomach and it was ages before I found a proper human belly on the NHS. There was a rapid transplant after the donor perished in a pineapple-juggling fiasco and when I woke up I had the uncomfortable sensation of digesting someone else's meal. There was a support group to cope with the adjustment and you should've heard the rumbling. Sometimes sea-lions popped up at the window and asked us to keep the noise down. They thought they were so superior.

Clusterbobbins 2010

28 days left in the race between doddering old ghoul and young blue menace. A reset button is begging to be pressed. I'll be away on the big day. I'm going to sell my vote and put the money on the greens getting at least one seat.
The papers are full of what might happen, what might happen if what could happen happens, what happens if what is happening continues to happen, and what happened in the past when what might've happened did happen, though a lot of people said it wouldn't, while fearing that it would. There isn't a lot of news.
Apparently the voting cards will have just two boxes: one for wrist deep and one for up to the elbow. The man on the last train home told me so. I called him a cynic. He said sinner mate, sinner. Fair enough. Yes, he said, and another thing you young shiny bollock: I used to have liquid light for brains, but in order not to dazzle people I had a dimmer switch installed, and now the knob's popped off and to buy another one I only need an extra 20p, have you got 20p?

That's Nice Dear

A narcoleptic phone is barely any use. It won't be coming wih me to the land of the lunch break. I got back a week ago and go forward in two. I will be spending a lot of time in the cave and phones are inappropriate there. You can get right up to the bats while they sleep and they don't seem to mind but probably you shouldn't do this too often.
While I'm away there'll be a disastrous election. And the new government will not let me back in for being too foreign and I'll be forced back to the Calais roadside ditches trying to jump onto lorries bound for ferries like those people we saw when we went there. It looked slightly dangerous. It's a good thing I just learned first-aid in a day. Call me doctor. Get your finger off that 9, I can bandage your head wounds and leave you in a position ideal for both breathing and vomiting. If you're a bit dead I can cardio-wallop you until the electric pads arrive. Why they didn't drill this into us at school I do not know. They do in Seattle and now people go there just to have heart attacks.
I missed the deadline for the Bristol story prize, which is a shame because this year I was definately going to come first, second and third. I'd only written one thing though, about a man who thinks the newspaper is his life story, ish, and then I got called away to Phrance at very short notice, and writing in the outdoors is difficult, and where we were the outdoors featured heavily, so I didn't have a chance to write the one about the woman who can't control her own face or the one about the man with no genitals whatsoever.
I did have time to read the SAS handbook and Callgirl. Both were good.