Tag: Edinburgh

50/50 Share in Proceeds for Northern Lass and Southern Lad Able to Match Mouth Noises to Written Symbols

Red Roger Red Hat's White House
The colour of Roger Red-hat’s hat is not a trick question but with no mention of his face, I coloured that red too – thinking outside the box, you see, means sometimes colouring outside the lines. On the next page, my teacher used my pencil to write in large letters that Roger lives in a white house then watched as I traced over each letter with my red felt-tip pen. Pleased, she moved on to another child in the class and left me to draw Roger’s house. Once satisfied, I put down my pencil and picked up my red crayon. As Pollock described it, ‘When I am in my painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing.’ There is no hesitation in those crayon strokes, just the determination of a willful boy with none of the doubt that would come to define him as a man. While I am incredibly fortunate to have this piece as a testament to an innocence once truly free, there does remain, however, one nagging concern with regard to the difficulty Red headed Roger Red-hat’s wife would have faced whenever looking for him in that red house. In retrospect, my mother clearly wasn’t hitting me hard or often enough.

How’s your reading? Does it give you headaches? Perhaps you need glasses. Do your lips move? Doesn’t matter, because I need a couple of people who can match the noises coming out of their mouths with the corresponding symbols on the pages of a book, just like back when books were thrilling accounts of all manner of adventures  which people in coloured hats were having. Continue reading “50/50 Share in Proceeds for Northern Lass and Southern Lad Able to Match Mouth Noises to Written Symbols” →

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Words From a Writer Too Stubborn to Fail

…would make for a great epitaph, no?

Anyway, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but a few years ago, when I’d moved back to the UK, I started sending out copies of my second book to literary agents (it was smaller, so cheaper to post) with nothing to signify who it was from or why but for “Please HELP me!” scrawled with a black Sharpie on the stark white of the cover.

My website was printed small by the barcode on the back at right angles to the jacket text and such was my naive, unfucked brain still fresh back in the fire that I felt anyone reading this GENIUS would want to seek him out and anyone WORTHY of representing him would be both able and willing, nay delighted to work their way through these cunning yet intriguing layers of mystery. Continue reading “Words From a Writer Too Stubborn to Fail” →

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Scottish Defence League March on Parliament


You wait ages for a racist then 50 turn up all at once; well it looked like 50 to me but the Police estimate 150 so what do I know? There were more people filming them though, that’s for sure – it’s the festival after all – and although the Police also put the counter-protest at 350, by far the greatest number of boots on the ground belonged to the Old Bill. Continue reading “Scottish Defence League March on Parliament” →

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The Love of My Life; With Name-Dropping of Philosophers, Fugitive Policemen and Others

The signs in my kitchen have long needed a reason to be shared. As for Katharina, I've not met her; she could still be here among my fellow poltergeists or perhaps the mice have carried her off. Shame - we might have had something.
The signs in my kitchen have long needed a reason to be shared. As for Katharina, I’ve not met her; she could still be here among my fellow poltergeists or perhaps the mice have carried her off. Shame – we might have had something.

Childless women in their thirties staying in bed until the mid-afternoon, reading their first book by Schopenhauer, Seneca or Montaigne – contemplating the apathy with which they regard their own mortality over the first gin of the afternoon and rubbing one out before the news kills the passion – these are the kinds of women you don’t seem to meet dating online.

I just read the manifesto of the vengeful L.A. Cop-Killing Killer-Cop who is currently running rings around his former colleagues after swearing to take the corrupt all to hell with their loved ones for a lack of honour, honesty and common decency. Continue reading “The Love of My Life; With Name-Dropping of Philosophers, Fugitive Policemen and Others” →

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Dear John, Alfie the Dog and Big Mama Thornton

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Big Mama Thornton and Alfie.

‘Hound Dog’ stuck on a loop in my head the other day, playing with Alfie – my Mum’s Cocker Spaniel. Turns out that although Elvis has the best known version, the song was first recorded by one Big Mama Thornton. I realise it was stars like Elvis that took the African-American blues to the cracker masses but until recently getting into Lightin’ Hopkins was as far as I crawled out of my lily-white honky box; and I’ve been missing out on so much. Continue reading “Dear John, Alfie the Dog and Big Mama Thornton” →

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The Squirrels of the Fourteen B’ak’tun

14th b'ak'tun squirrel
14th b’ak’tun squirrel

If you’d told me five years ago I’d be spending the last day of planet earth in Gosport I’d have laughed in your face. I’d planned to play it safe and ride out 21st Dec 2012 somewhere up a mountain with a hunting rifle, caring Scandinavian wife and waterfall caves of tinned food. I came to my senses; but when 11.11am passed without global incident I shrugged like everybody else.

Still, there’s always the Rapture to look forward to. That and any number of asteroids. And the whole global warming thing. Another end of the world is always just around the corner, friend. Continue reading “The Squirrels of the Fourteen B’ak’tun” →

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In Which I Talk About the News, Drugs, Star Trek and Make a Picture for John Lennon

A picture I made while listening to the Beatles. I didn't realise but Lennon was murdered 32 years ago today. It's for him then.
A picture I made while listening to the Beatles. I didn’t realise but Lennon was murdered 32 years ago today. It’s for him then.

Christ, I don’t know. I suppose I should say something; it has been a while, after all. What have I been up to lately? Well I didn’t kill myself yet but don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind, fellow travellers. Continue reading “In Which I Talk About the News, Drugs, Star Trek and Make a Picture for John Lennon” →

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Poppy is a Cat Who Loves Shoes

My girlfriend has a cat whose name is Poppy.
Poppy likes me. Poppy loves my shoes. Poppy doesn’t care about politics, sex or foreign conflicts. She will only drink water from the tap in the bath.
All hail Poppy.
I wish I had a tail. That’d be great, can you imagine it?
Miaow.

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