Black Sabbath - Walpurgis

The first music I got into was the glam rock of Slade, Sweet and Gary Glitter when I was six or seven. From there I worked my way through the Beatles catalog. Then as I turned eleven or twelve I got hold of my first Black Sabbath album. By the time I was 14 they had split up but I had all the albums bar Never Say Die. They were my favourite band for those years and I loved them ever since. It was so sad to hear about Ozzy dying though not entirely unexpected. I discussed going to the final concert in Birmingham but it was very expensive and I am not fond of any of the support bands there. I don't like heavy metal on the whole much as I love the Sex Pistols but don't like much punk rock. I did get to see the reformed Sabbath once on the last but one tour but they were way past their best. Hopefully this link will work for anyone interested in hearing an early version of what would become War Pigs done for the John Peel show. Utterly brilliant. https://youtu.be/7qVRJmFvSS0?si=zIRG4skWoD-yVo6u

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Shuttle shaped dart

Dogs

I'm watching Lawrence Krauss interviews with Richard Dawkins and then Johnny Depp (who I don't get but he seems to be friends with loads of people I admire) but he's boring me stupid. He's on about truth. Now I have had dogs most of my life. And there's a reason. Humans play out a game of presentation that slips from truth and to complete lies all the time. We all do it. But where you can tell someone one thing while you are doing the opposite and they will fall for it or at least be so bound by our rituals so as to go along with it. And we don't even know ourselves that we are doing it. Of course there are con men. But mostly it's a pretence to ourselves too. We are living our own lies. Dogs are oblivious to that layer. You can't pretend to play with a dog because they know immediately that you're not having fun. Some might humour you but most won't. So I've always had dogs. Well, I had Pavlov thrust upon me. I never liked dogs as a child and Pavlov was worse than most. But Dalby went off one night and never came back. Left me with his dog and I had to learn. I couldn't have one for a decade or so then I got Tex. Dook. And now Bentley. They all deserve a book and they have all made me a better man. So there's lies. They won't let you lie. You can lie to your friends and family but you can't lie to a dog. It's horrible. Why would anyone expose themselves to this. I better go take Bentley out and shut up this bullshit.

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Or Sallow Kitten I guess

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White Furcula

Stonehenge 85

Dale Vince calls for Battle of the Beanfield to be included in Orgreave policing inquiry
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jul/27/dale-vince-battle-beanfield-orgreave-policing-inquiry?CMP=share_btn_url

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Saturday

In the morning, to sort out my arthritic legs, I made boiled eggs on toast with fried mushrooms and tomatoes. When I was a kid my dad would sometimes make a proper breakfast and it really is up there with a Sunday roast. Such is my exotic taste.

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Collita Griseola

Walking

Tonight I got an Uber to get something as Claire had lent the car out. I ran in and came back expecting him to take me home but he said he had to go to another job. I was seven miles from home with a chunk and a pipe. I rarely walk far these days. The route I know as a driver I now know in detail. Through the town the pissheads were saying goodbye or buying fast food. They were all friendly. I stopped under a railway bridge and had a pipe but knew that I had a long way to go and needed to be strong. I summoned up psychedelic mindset and for a while I was an old English king from over a thousand years ago. He filled my body and gave me strength. Then as the lanes became tighter I disturbed tawny owls. Their wings hit twigs and I felt the wind. Then bats began to check me out. In my early years I would have thought nothing of that but now it's harder. But I did it. I'm home at 1:15 and my body is starting to relax. My hands were swollen but they're settling down now.

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Consciousness

There is only one thing that we know for certain to be true is that we are here

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Common blue

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Common footman

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Pull business card

I've still got a few left of my old spring steel, acid etched, business cards. They were inspired by the foil tab that you pull out when you're opening a pack of Marlboro cigarettes. The numbers are all obsolete now though they are still used by many as tools for preparing cocaine for ingestion. Back then we spent a lot of time in night clubs in Bristol and Bath. I remember the night I came up with the idea whilst high as a kite on pills in Moles club. I teamed up with a friend, Clive to create a design business. We could have been successful. Our first job we designed an exhibition stand, well, I designed the exhibition stand but Clive, who had previously worked for McCloud lighting, Kevin McCloud now best known for Grand Designs channel 4 tv program. I had the ideas. Clive was able to talk to clients with a confidence I lacked. Anyway the exhibition stand won an award, Clive contributed nothing but took two thirds of the money and moved into my house while I was away in Spain. After a month I came back, his stuff was heaped into the living room and the cat had gone. To this day I have no clue as to why he thought it would be 'cool' to move in and he made no attempt to explain what his plans were. So I lost my temper and took all his stuff to the workshop. I found Mag who was a far better partner and person to work alongside. But it could have worked. Maybe I underestimated the importance of being able to sell an idea to a client. Maybe I undervalued his contribution. Nevertheless on the design front it was 95% my ideas.

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common footman

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Ruby Tiger

Common blue

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Shaded Broadbar

Butterflies

Small Heath

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Another Riband Wave and a new single dotted wave

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Scalloped oak

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Camptogramma

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Single dotted wave

Martin

Martin deserves much more than a brief appearance in the story of how I got my nickname and became Skree. We must have been about 9 years old when a new kid appeared at our school. A mass of curly blond hair and a cheeky grin. His mother called a party for his birthday and he randomly chose a dozen boys who he hoped might become his friends because as yet he hadn't had time to make any organically. I had talked to him, was invited and was his friend until his death when we must have been about 30. He'd come from the Bahamas where his dad ran a casino and bare that in mind as the morality tale plays out. Gambling is perhaps the purest and worst addiction as there is no drug involved. Just the dopamine and other neurotransmitters triggered by a win or a loss. His father ran a casino in the Bahamas and also in Leeds where they had moved to. Martin hated Leeds having been plucked from the sun, blue sky, turquoise sea and white sand in to a dirty city where the Yorkshire ripper had dropped at least four bodies no more than a mile and a half from where we lived. He was still roaming and hunting. The Leeds United Service Crew and other gangs like the HEB, Harehills Evil Bastards and other violent groups were on the dirty, dark streets. He'd come from heaven to hell and that feeling never left him.

We had become something like best friends. Best friends change throughout your life but for long stints we were tight. When the busting of the magic mushroom cult happened his parents were sent a letter that told them that he had been involved and that I was the ringleader. In their great wisdom they decided that they had to take their son away from my bad influence. So they found a residential school and once more ripped him off and away from the freinds he had made. They packed him off and dropped him at Leeds train station. I don't know if he took a different train or what but he went AWOL. The local paper, the Yorkshire Evening Post had a running story. "Missing Boy with Drug Problem". He had no problem with drugs at this time but he did go missing and hitch hiked around the country. One update reported a siting in Wales. Another day he was seen at Stonehenge. There were no phones back then apart from in the posher houses. I had no clue where he was but the police came round more than once to question me. Even if I had known where he was I wouldn't have told them. He hated his dad, hated his brother. Only his mother showed him love but her influence was not of a strength to stop the ludicrous ideas of the father. A man whose wealth was the fruit of the addicts whose lives were destroyed by his casino's.

Finally he ran out of money and had to come back to the area. We used to spend a lot of time in the woods where we built fires, took mushrooms and had a laugh. We used to build what we called bivouacs. These were shelters we built. First we'd dig a shallow pit into the loamy soil of the forest floor. Then build a skeletal frame from branches where we then wove fearns. Finally sods of grass were firmly tucked over it all leaving what from one side was a grassy mound but from the other an opening allowed us entry. Sometimes half a dozen of us would squeeze in and spend the night tripped out. We'd sit round the fire and sometimes these became huge and when they burned down we'd sit round the fire as our trips tapered down to the philosophical end part where our discoveries were shared and great wisdom was imparted to us by pagan gods and spirits of the woods whose lineage stretched back through the secret history of mushroom eaters. The Liberty Cap is common in England and other countries around and small groups like ourselves, usually peripheral to the mainstream have found great wisdom and a different perspective on human existence. We are only a part of this secret history that stretches back to the Druids that underwent 20 years of training yet left no written history. We only have the few pieces of writing from Romans looking in. They were persecuted, tortured and killed. Driven to the edge of Wales and Cornwall and some to the Orkney islands though the many earthworks and stone circles and barrows and hill forts speak to us. I have already written about how Christ had travelled with his uncle, Joseph of Aramathea, a tin trader, to Cornwall and Glastonbury and Priddy. Here any engaged in a hunger for spiritual truth would have sought out those who had the knowledge. Dru in old English means oak and id comes from the Greek to make Druid, the knowledge of the oak tree. Both me and Martin were part of this ancient strand that stretches back in time and no doubt forward to provide a counter knowledge to the mainstreams.

After school I would take him food and we'd cook on the open fire. Of course gossip travels quickly amongst young teenagers and I told my girlfriend who Martin wanted to reach out to her best friend, martins girlfriend. Rather than go see him she buckled under police pressure and grassed. When I heard I ran for two miles to warn him. As I passed my house I saw a police car outside and I continued on to the woods and as I got close I saw two policemen, one holding each of his arms, leading him to their car.

This severed our friendship for a while. I had left home but after a year or so had moved down to a communal cottage in Cornwall. I was there, away from Leeds for two years during which time he had left school and home and joined the counter culture group I had left that had morphed and grown so when I returned I knew but a quarter of the people who he hung out with. We were in slightly different circles that only crossed paths at gigs, parties or festivals. Me and Sibyl didn't want to be in Leeds but got a flat in chapel allerton. Our top flat was fine until one day Phil and Jo moved into the one below then Pig and Feddy took the ground floor flat. Now the house was no longer a sanctuary but a full on mental institution. Where before we just smoked cannabis, did acid and rarely speed now everyone was drinking. There were three of us who made home brew so over a two week cycle three batches of 40 pints were made. Mick, mine or martins would be ready and we were all pissed a lot. The fighting began here. Turps had changed from a peaceful hippie to a weird and scary alcoholic. Feddy had a fight with him on the ground floor as did I on the middle. It was a broken vibe. The joy of drugs and drink descended into darkness and mental illness. Soon amphetamines became popular with those at the nucleus of the scene. We found the new works exchange scheme meant we had clean works and injecting speed is an incredible rush. Better than crack and longer lasting though a binge would taper off into paranoia after four or five days without sleep or food. Martin got a flat just a few yards up the road and along with his homebrew knocked out hash and speed though I was now buying quarters, seven grams elsewhere though we did have sessions together. He got into bikes and broke down an old BSA bantom on which he tinkered finally completing it.

The scene became too much. Feddy was starting to become successful with his music and moved to Harrogate and me and sibyl moved to Hyde park and shared a basement flat with Dean.

After some time I found a cottage deep in the Yorkshire dales; beyond Hawes by five miles is Gayle. Beyond Gale is High Bands where roads stop and rough tracks accessible only by tractor continue.

One time I went back to Leeds to get something and Martin took me back on his Bantam. It rattled away but we made it. Quite a feet on an old 125cc motorbike. He had a little fling with Sibyl as did many of my friends. She was fit then and had a great body, loved sex and was a nightmare.

Fast forward a couple of years and id managed to offload Sibyl on a simple chap, Si Oxby. I ran a shared house in Leeds dealing hashish and running a market stall with Andy Lee who is a great friend I still see to this day. We had a sail on the market stall and pooled the money for tickets for 72 nights in Portugal. Me and Andy walked the south coast, wild camping every night before jumping the train to Evora and on to Portalegra. Martin came to join us and we went back down to Faro. Now a threesome I had the misguided idea to head north to the mountains in the north where we met cold weather and stayed in dormitory beds for a few days before Andy suggested we go to the capital Lisboa. I remember the tight streets in the north of the city where the African community lived. We drank in the numerous small bars. I believe that this area has since been erased by a big fire. We stayed in an overpacked hostel with loads of Austy backpackers. Me and Martin didn't like it and left arranging to meet Andy at the bar nearest to the sea in a village on the first bit of land that projected out into the Atlantic. Here we bought hashish and got very drunk one night and we made our way out on a bunch of rocks that stretched out into the sea. I'd never seen Martin so happy. Martin looked at me as huge waves crashed in . I said we should be careful we could die. Martin turned to me and said "so what!" Such was his joy. This optimised Martin. His broad smile and wide eyes made it clear he was not joking and maybe he should have died there where he was so happy. When Andy met us we split up and he went off on his own. Me and Andy made our way down the coast with a couple in a van for a while and finally bumped into Martin one last time in Faro before we got the flight back to England. From this point on Martin followed me . Ultimately this would piss me off. I got into woodwork and did a course for my city and guilds in carpentry and joinery. Soon after Martin did the course. We somehow got into intravenous amphetamine use and this punctuates the whole story from now on but I won't mention it again. Just know it's what we did right up until I went to high Wycombe.

After that I spent a bit more time travelling before starting a course in fine furniture design and making in Shrewsbury. Next year Martin had started the same course in Thames at Rycotewood. During my summer break I was considering going back down to Kent to go fruit picking as I had done in previous years. Yet on a visit to see my friend Andy Lee's workshop I walked into a furniture restoration workshop. Brian O'Connell took me on and I worked the summer months there. As I left for my final year I arranged with Brian that I could rent a room in his house, rent a place in his workshop to do my own work and to work for him to pay for this. I left safe in the knowledge that id be in a steady position once I finished college.

After my final year I packed my stuff in to my girlfriend Alice's car. We'd been together for a few months now and I looked forward to showing her where I was going to be for the immediate future. When we got there Martin was there too. He'd heard, in fact I must have told him of my arrangement with Brian and he'd pinched my place. I was livid. We somehow made it work but he'd pissed me off. I'm not sure whether he was following me, competing with me or idolising me but he'd been following what I did for a few years now and taken a place I thought offered me a clean break. I found working for Brian and living with him too much in the end. I had to work for nothing for two days a week to have the rest to myself. I got a few jobs and eventually moved upstairs to share with Andy where I felt more comfortable. Martin was becoming a bit unstable. Turned up to work after drinking a bottle of vodka one day. Stuff like that.

Eventually I was seeing the fun Alice and her friends were having at art college. In Cheltenham, a posh little town but not without its dark corners. I'd had enough of working to get able to make things and thought if I had a degree I could do a day a week teaching to supplement my income, just like the heroes I had; Fred Baier, Rupert Williamson, Richard la trobe Bateman. So I went to Buckinghamshire College in high Wycombe. I'm not sure where Martin went around this time as I remained pissed at him over his trying to take my place. When I finished the course I moved to Shropshire near Clun. Alice had bought a cottage there and I was restoring it.

Meanwhile up in Leeds my best friend Richard had become addicted to heroin and had started selling it. I'd go up and spend a few weeks there, sick at first but getting used to it after a while before spending a fortnight or so in bliss. I'd come back home, spend a couple of days sleeping it off and then get back to work. I had just begun teaching when I got a call from Richard. He told me he needed me to go up. Martin had died in his kitchen. The story Richard told me went like this and it is probably close to the truth. Martin had got a new job retuning video recorders for the new tv channel 5. He wanted to celebrate this and bought a mere £5 worth of gear off Richard. He had wanted to bang it up, inject it like we did speed. I was smoking it on the occasions I went up. Richard warned him it was strong and only to do half. He had his hit. Everyone was stoned. Martin went off, presumably to the toilet Richard thought. After a while he began to wonder where Martin was. He found him slumped, wedged between the two sides of the kitchen. He'd overdosed. Richard rang the ambulance they took him away and put him on life support where his family saw him and instructed the doctors to turn it off. He was brain dead.

I travelled up the night before the funeral and went to Richard's where I got off my face. I was supposed to go with pig to the church bit but instead I was throwing up in the woods opposite the church. St John's church, the church of the parish we had grown up in. I had promised I would stick to Richard like glue at the wake so made it to the Allerton pub. The pub my dad once drank in. Here there were a lot of people from his family. He had hated them. Then there were us, his friends. I had not thought about his parents since they had sent him off to boarding school for taking mushrooms when we were at school. We were flying then. Life had been exciting but they had ripped that from him and here was the result. I saw a lot of freinds and we had a good drink to send him off. I thought id better talk to his brother at least. He came at me like it was my fault. He said if only id seen him on the life support machine id not be smiling. I explained I wasn't smiling because I was happy, I was just being cordial. Also I hadn't lived in Leeds for years and had no control on what Martin or his friends did. If his family had supported instead of ostracised him he might still be here. I was his target as the bad influences talked of in the evening post 15 or more years before. Fucking idiot. It was no one's fault. A tragic accident. I've had a number of friends die from heroin. My best friend for a time Martin. Then my best friend from the time I'm writing about now, Richard. He too fell from heroin. I'll tell his story another time.

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Ribband Wave

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Ghost Swift

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Two single dotted waves

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Two single dotted waves

Leaving home

The circumstances around my leaving home played out over a couple of years. At school I was banned from German, Physics, chemistry, maths and biology for disrupting the class. At first they sat me at a table outside the headmaster's office where I was to write lines. This punishment had me writing the same phrase line after line.

I must not disrupt lessons

I must not disrupt lesson's

For page after page. Corporal punishment was common practice at my junior and middle school and I witnessed a few thrashings but never suffered one myself. By the time I was in high school culture had changed and teachers now were not to hit children. It was replaced by writing lines as though the repetition of the phrase would imprint itself into the student's consciousness but it was just boring.

I'd watch the coming and going of teachers doing the hidden stuff. Pupils were not generally privy to the telling off they received from the headmaster but I developed an understanding of how they interacted when they weren't teaching. They were people. I don't think I had ever considered how scary it can be when you're not one of the crowd. And it wasn't until I tried teaching my craft, my trade when I was 31 and I had a breakdown. I sometimes think back about my disruptive behaviour and failure to see how vulnerable the person at the front feels. For some it's water off a ducks back. They like being the centre of attention. But I would like to apologise to every teacher that I tested and used the crowd, played the crowd for no good reason. I did about three years of it at the university of central England, Wolverhampton University, Shrewsbury College and high Wycombe. When I went to university I already had experience and trade qualifications but I had seen that most of my favourite furniture makers did a few days a week teaching to support their business as everyone knows that the time spent on a piece is entirely dependent on budget and the better the work, the less money you make. So this was the plan. I'd get a degree so I could teach in the universities and colleges. I stuck it out for about three years before I had my first proper breakdown. I had put in place a four year plan, abandoned my first business and got qualified and passed interviews with ease but I didn't have what it takes. I spent a year as a technician after university and before teaching and I was brilliant in there. I salvaged numerous students and carried them through. I was embarrassingly good. I exposed the laziness of the other technicians and it was what I did that year that gave me all the teaching jobs. But that's another story.

After a while of this stupidity the art teacher Mrs Steele, a saviour to me said I never disrupted art lessons and I could stay quiet and focused in the art room instead. Here I developed my own little studio area and had the paintings out all the time. I now had 12 double art periods where I'd once had just one. It was sublime. I broke the system and landed in paradise. I've lost all my art from school years ago, along with all the Screecher comics. By now I had no chance of passing any o levels and back then the non academic kids could leave at Easter the idea being they might find apprenticeships in manual trades. But with my art teachers backing I was allowed to leave. It really was best for everyone. Yet she arranged it for me to return for the art exams and I would at least have one o level in art.

At home my dad had remarried Anne. She was about 30, 10 years younger than my dad. We hated each other. She laid down the ultimatum to my dad, either I left or she would. I had signed on and was waiting for my first giro to be able to get a room in the shared house with my brother and my freinds. There was a room I just needed to give the landlord a deposit.

The marriage was humiliating for me. My dad, his new wife, my brother and my sister were all sat at a table on the stage from where my dad would speak. I, however was on a table with my uncle Nigel, my mum's older brother and my sister's best friends family. I'd been chucked out. A cuckoo was on the nest and I was the chick she pushed out. I confronted my father as to why and he gave me some bullshit saying there wasn't enough room. I felt really insulted and to this day feel my piss boiling when I think about it. So I found a room with a table full of glasses, perhaps 200 of them. Little flutes and I got drunk to soften the blow of being kicked out of the family. It was boring. My dad gave me some notes and the child allowance book to get us through the fortnight of their honeymoon. I left immediately and bought a small sheet of acid, 50 black star on red background tiles and a half ounce of a seriously rich black hashish. We had a wild fortnight, through a party and had 50 or so friends there many of who bought or were given acid. It was mental! I never used to go in my dad's bedroom but that day I did. Rummaging through Anne's drawer I found four giro cheques that were mine. She had stolen and stashed them. Why? I don't know. She really wanted me to go but had stolen the cheques I needed to do so. On their return I had another last showdown where I had committed the crime of going through her stuff. I was now the thief. Obviously there was only one thief. I gathered my things together and left. It would be a few years before I saw my dad again and we never got over it really. The week before my grandma died lady dianna did too. This must have been ten years since I left home. I'd seen my dad maybe twice in that time. The night before the funeral I stayed at my dad's flat and it's the only time we slept under the same roof after leaving home. I wanted nothing from him and he was far from a generous man anyway. He'd shown his colours when I was given the choice of breaking up his new marriage or leaving. We went for a few pints the night before and I asked him why she had stolen my giros. She'd mistaken them for her own mail. Did she not see the name? Just bullshit. And why, at the wedding had I been placed with random acquaintances while the married couple and their family ate from their table on the stage. Oh it was simply a practical thing. Not enough space. He was still spinning the same bullshit narrative from ten years ago. His marriage had dissolved in less then a year after I left and he was now seriously drinking. So that's how I left home. Not yet 16 and went out into the world.

One last thing. On the day of my exams, 1982. My brother and comfy Chris had set off hitchhiking to Stonehenge festival. I was to do my exam and set off the next day with Pig I think. I walked through Gledhow Valley woods and halfway I found a dry patch between two big beech trees. To this day I regret my decision but I couldn't face going back to the school. I missed the chance Mrs Steele had fought for me to have and I still feel bad for letting her down. Years later I did manage to get a message back to her to thank her for all she did for me and apologised for letting her down. I let her know that I had enjoyed my life working in the creative industries and perhaps without her I never would have.

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Engrailed

Screecher no 31 Cover

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Fwd: Screecher no 31

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Begin forwarded message:

From: michael wainwright <skreeworld@yahoo.com>
Date: 4 July 2025 at 00:06:37 BST
To: skreeworld.bollocks@blogger.com
Subject: Screecher no 31

I was about 6 or so and I'd already got into comics so did Screecher numbers 1 to 30. Then I stopped because my favourite comic was Silver Surfer and it only ran to 17 before poor sales saw the title withdrawn. To my young mind it was easily the best marvel comic and it hit me. Only through glorious failure to make it in the mainstream could an artist truly realise his ambitions. So I stopped the title and over the years they all got lost. Nevertheless they remained in the secret history of my group. For years my brother and other friends would talk of them and they gathered a mythical status. Lost screeds. Sometime later we were in the Yorkshire dales and discovered what scree was and I hurt myself scree running, a banned sport that had the glorious idiocy of the Gloucester cheese run where broken bones were common and local legends were cemented in to the local culture. A man who had won, even if it was back in the 70s could expect free drinks for life and the respect usually reserved for pop stars or football players. Anyway somewhere in this malay my nickname became Skree. I used a k for graphic effect and it has stuck to the level that 90% of people I know call me Skree. I don't ever introduce myself as skree but it's what I am known as. Like nearly all nicknames they begin as banter. It's also handy if you're with company that you don't particularly want to have your name. At school when we discovered magic mushrooms we had a series of parties where the tight nit nucleus of the group all took mushrooms and the more peripheral watched the madness and mysticism we experienced. This small cult was short lived and the school found out and like a police investigation all were questioned and they all grassed me up as the ring leader. Due to the fact I lived feral. My mother had died and my father became a heavy pub drinker who held a certain status as an entertainer. Me, my brother and sister were left to do as we liked. There were times when the electric was off as my dad hadn't paid the bill. With open fires and candles you can't keep anything clean. My first seven years of school I had really tried and usually came top or second on any project in the class. But once my mum was gone I stopped trying and sort to be the best at being the worst. You can't do homework in candle light as you get soot everywhere. In the modern day we would undoubtedly have been taken into care. Torn curtains, broken windows that were never fixed. My dad had lost his way and I rarely saw him. Sometimes we might go to the rugby league but my brother and myself to a lesser degree moved from the old man and children area and went to the south stand where the focus of the crowd noise was. We'd go to away games in winter, to hull or Wakefield and the hooliganism was always close. Anyway, the teachers had decided I was the ring leader and they were probably right. Sadly my close friend Martin was sent off to a private school. Instead he got on the train and went on a tour of the country. The local evening newspaper the Evening Post ran a continuing Missing Boy With Drug Problem as he hitchhiked and traveled the country for a few weeks. Finally he returned and came to live in the woods sleeping in a den we had in the woods. After school I would take him food. The paper said that his parents had seen their son mixing with the wrong sort. The entire business had them looking for someone to blame. I was the one who took the blame. The head master became a detective, questioning kids and looking for someone to blame. Never crossed his mind that they were all free agents. The reason I bring this up was he had it in his mind that there was some outside force. Someone above me even. Of course there was no dealer, the mushrooms grew on local school fields and they were abundant. Every day after school I'd go pick a few hundred. Some were dried but mostly I did them throughout the season and pretty much every night. Sometimes with friends but more often on my own. Walking around woods and across golf courses. I was, perhaps a little evangelical and spread the word of spiritual enlightenment through fungi. I grew to detest the taste and changed to boiling them up to make a powerful tea. I recall one time drinking it down then my dad came to get his quick wash, a second shave of the day, a splash of overpowering aftershave. Half the time he'd go straight to the pub, drink until closing time, come home and straight to bed. So there were the occasional fifteen minutes he had his ablutions and went out to drink copious amounts of beer. I'd always, if I was there, be in my bedroom pretending to be asleep, tripping balls. By now I had freinds a year or three older than me who had moved out into shared houses and flats and I'd go stay with them. Away for weeks at a time and he either didn't notice or pretended he didn't. The school sent letters out to the parents and one night when I was tripping he came home plastered and we had a father to son chat where coloured light clusters sweeper around the room like mini UFOs as his face morphed and distorted as he tried to impart wisdom. I think he knew I was like him and was altering my consciousness to cope with our loss. He couldn't cope and eventually lost his job. I never learned how that played out and I never had any understanding of what he did. I think he sold stainless steel containers to people in the Middle East. Before my mum died and our family was functional he travelled to Doah, Bahrain and other places I had no picture of. He was a great talker and always had a cluster of men who drank with him and listened to his bar room comedian and bar stool preaching. Years later I was excitedly told by a friends father that he was a legend. He was a clever man. Much smarter than his followers. If I had been his age I can imagine I would have been his friend. But beneath this the death of his wife had left him broken. In drink he put on a brave front. But he was an absent father. We lost both parents when my mother died. Really he was going through the motions. He just didn't want any hassle from the school and he hated the police and I'd get a bollocking after he'd fucked off the nosy bastards. He lived Ireland, Irish folk songs and would travel over there for fishing and drinking trips. He had a lot of Irish friends. But I'd be pissed off with him when the electric went off. Cooking over an open fire. But I could do anything and had a freedom none of my friends had. As all my friends placed the blame on me they knew I could handle it. I had a friend called Pig Penchion and the head master grilled me. Who was this Pin Cushion. This Big Pusher. I didn't correct his stupid misunderstanding. Nicknames protect you. No one, or few people know my real name. Our house never got cleaned properly after my mother died. Torn curtains. Broken windows . I have seen better squats. Finally I left home and stepped into the counter culture where I continued my study of the forbidden sciences.

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Half Man Half Biscuit - Horror Clowns Are Dickheads [Official Art Track]

https://youtu.be/apYwBHKkhdM?si=sfmoa-FRw_KkTzVU
Nearly all bands begin, get good, peak then stumble on to shitness. Half Man Half Biscuit however just keep improving. Exactly what the world needs now. I was just about giving up on life then this genius band release a new album and life feels worth living again.
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Stairwell moths

Udea olivalis