Scrapper Blackwell - Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out

Lord of the Rings [1978] - One to Rule Them All

Bert Jansch - Black Waterside

JACK KEROUAC on THE STEVE ALLEN SHOW with Steve Allen 1959

Warren Zevon - My Shits Fucked Up

I've written a piece for The Bugle called 'Why everything nowadays is basically just a load of old pants, and not in the least like it used to be in the old days when everything was always so much better in every conceivable way'.
I'm now writing a follow-up piece called 'Why everything nowadays is so much better in every conceivable way than it was in the old days, when everything was not in the least like it is now and basically just a load of old pants.'
They haven't accepted it or anything.  In fact, I haven't even sent it away.  In fact,  I haven't even written any of it yet, and probably never will.

Cheese.  Remember when cheese tasted like cheese?
No, me neither.

Am I invisible or am I a vampire?

Why is Tuppence averse to work?  Why are you, you might well ask, and who are you to criticise, since you never do a hand's turn.  Well, I can answer that one.  It's different for me, because I'm Older, and life was different Back Then. I never had to work.  In fact, we took a pride in not working, back then.  We diddled along, as best we could, living on supplies stolen from the Tunnels and stuff Geoffrey found in the bins at the tourist car park.  We asked for nothing and we took nothing, except what we needed plus a bit extra just in case.  Of course as you know,  the tourist car park has in recent years been transformed by Val and Dave Nark into an eco-friendly holiday park with yurts and 'pods' all ready with welcome packs filled with Val's hedgerow jams, nettle gin and the like. Forty pounds per person per night and that's in low season, thank you very much. I wouldn't pay that for a rat-infested glorified tent with a 'green' toilet, but lycra-clad, wet-suited, kayaking, paddle-boarding fools with a penchant for quinoa do.  The bins are now lidded and labelled for recycling by the way.  Any spare food goes for composting.  Not that there is anything - nothing that appeals to us, at any rate.  Nothing worth nicking.
No, what we need is a good old Wallace Arnold bus tour.  Overfed pensioners who can't finish their crisps and chuck half-empty packets out the window, along with cheese and pickle sandwiches, cocktail sausages, Chelsea Buns and Empire biscuits.  Discarded Chelsea buns would enable us to make an attempt at a five a day,  not that we care about such things, with their half-dozen raisins and the glace cherry on top.
Anyway - why is Tuppence averse to work?  Answer - he isn't, not in my book.  Tuppence works very hard at the things he likes to do, for example playing in his band and firing his pistols at random strangers. What's wrong with that?  Leaving aside the exploitation aspect, why should he have to clean toilets for three pounds fifty an hour, when he doesn't like it?
I challenged Val Nark about this the other day but she just barged past me as if I didn't exist. Perhaps I don't.  I'm actually starting to wonder.  They do say you become invisible when you reach a certain age.  At least that's what Mrs Tupfinder-general wrote in a letter to Polly, the 'Bugle' problem page agony aunt last week.  Am I invisible or am I a vampire, she asked. Because I can't see myself in the mirror.  Is it me, Polly - am I yet another victim of 'male gaze syndrome'?

more on this later.

Next time - 'Polly' turns out to be none other than Bert Vickers, moonlighting taxi driver and part-time journo, who learned writing in prison.

Donnie McPhartney and his secret black pudding ingredient (part one)

'I can't see the Dorty Bizzums making it big.  That's what Donnie McPhartney told me anyway, as he piped black pudding mixture into genuine organic casings.'
Tuppence was distraught.  He'd been all the way to Inverness, on a high after our Hogmanay triumph (more on that later)  hoping to get more'gigs', and Donnie McPhartney was the very man to see, so he'd heard.
'Wherever did you hear such a thing?'
'Someone said something at the Puff Inn after our Hogmanay gig.  I can't remember who - it was late on.'
'But Donnie McPhartney's a butcher.  He's renowned for his black puddings, but...'
'That doesn't preclude him being a booker and promoter and talent scout as well. He bought Eve Graham a vodka at the Station Hotel in 1978 - and that was when she was big.  He's a good fellow to keep on the right side of.'
'But he doesn't think much of the Dorty Bizzums.'
'No.'
'He hasn't seen us perform though.' I didn't like to say 'play'.  'So how can he know?'
'He said he has a nose for talent. He says he can smell success before he sees it. And I just smelled of cheese and onion crisps, plasticine, and someone else's stale tobacco. That would be yours Uncle Tuppy but I never said anything.   I did say that we might add in comb and paper, and whistling, and maybe rubbing the rims of several wine glasses with differing levels of fluid in, to make ourselves more current, but he just shrugged and continued filling his black pudding casings.'
'For goodness sake.  You'd think he'd have someone to do that for him.  After all, it's a well-established business.'
'You mean like a modern-style apprentice, like I was, at £3.50 an hour?'
'Well...'
'The thing is, he likes to do it all himself.  The black pudding contains a secret ingredient, you see, that makes people develop not just a taste for it, but a craving.  They get physically and psychologically addicted, very quickly.  It's like crack cocaine.'
'And he doesn't want anyone to find out what the ingredient is.  Well I'm not surprised.  It sounds like it's probably illegal.'
'Nothing wrong with that Uncle Tuppy.  And I suspect you're right.'


next time - after a top-level meeting back at the Outcrop, we decide to go to Inverness to find out what exactly Donnie McPhartney is putting in his black puddings.

Further to my post about M.R. James...

Further to my earlier post about M.R. James, I have all but given up reading his 'Collected Ghost Stories' because as well as putting me off my sleep, they're creeping me out on walks.  This will not do.  Sleeping well and walking in the fresh air are crucial for most people's general well-being, particularly in the case of anyone who, like me, hovers on the verge of insomnia much of the time, and both are interlinked.  I've learned that if I don't get out for an hour's walk in the fresh air during the day, I will not sleep well, unless I'm physically ill.  And if I don't sleep well, I tend to lack the energy to walk. I cannot allow myself to get into that unhealthy cycle. It's not just the exercise that matters. It's the calming, meditative effect of walking and observing nature that allows my mind to settle and relax.   So, I'm modifying my night-time reading and have returned to Richard Lancelyn Green's lengthy and reassuring introduction to the Penguin edition of E.W. Hornung's The Amateur Cracksman, for about the eleventh time.
I say 'all but' and 'modifying' because I'm still dipping into M.R. James, even though it makes me look over my shoulder to check if some nameless beast is following me from the shadows, and I'm frightened to move the duvet in the dark or put the light on in case I find the same awful be-wigged, hairy-mouthed ghastliness has continued to follow me and is now staring at me from hollow, cobwebby eye sockets.  Yesterday I startled a hare when walking by the ruins of Clunie Castle,  an atmospheric place 'steeped in history' if ever there was, and therefore almost certainly haunted, if you believe in such things, and wondered if there was some significance to the hare, given what we know about the mythology surrounding them.
As I looked at the ruins I thought, of course, about James's story 'A View from a Hill'.  I almost wished I had those magic binoculars so that I could see what the castle had looked like in the 1400s when it was built. There are no surviving illustrations, and I can find precious little information about it, which is surprising given that it's a place of some apparent significance and that the ruins are relatively large.
My quest continues.
Overall, it does occur to me that perhaps being creeped out and unsettled - in a mild kind of way - has its merits - it makes you think about things from a different angle.

To be continued...