Common plume
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Thursday, 16 July 2026
Wednesday, 15 July 2026
Monday, 13 July 2026
chapter 8. The last survivor
chapter 8. The last survivor
I long ago learned that what Lou Reed had sung, ten years before I would come to understand as a pearl of wisdom, as accurate and succinct now as it had been in 1967 where his band, a collective of misfits, arranged together like a collage, a piece of art by Andy Warhol spearheading a counter culture to the counter culture, the Velvet Underground, when waiting for your man you always have to wait. I’d rung her (here my man was a woman) half an hour ago and spoken to her where, impatiently she’d informed me it would be ten minutes. I knew that this meant at least twenty minutes. She told me she’d be out as soon as she was reloaded. This meant she had to pop upstairs to the flat above where her man lived. This was a secret that every punter who scored there knew. I pictured her, back home, returning from her short journey with the goods and perhaps some hanger on in tow as she boiled up the cocaine and sodium bicarbonate in a soot stained desert spoon. Is there a junky musician who hasn’t thought of naming their new album The Dark side of the Spoon? Surely some fashionable dandy, a Pete Doherty or Kurt Cobain had used such an obvious yet beautifully simple album title.
Sorting me out would come as a low priority until she’d had her pipe. Crack is prioritised before everything else for a crackhead. A rock star.
Quite why I’d fallen back in to my addiction that I thought I had long left behind I couldn’t tell you. Following the long journey home after our assembly of witches, Druids, Shamen and the messiah had done the dirty on the super rich I’d made my way back to England. I was the sole survivor. No one could have survived the explosion. It just wasn’t possible. A crazed ex policeman had ultimately proved pivotal to our success in taking out Rupert Bunsens Noah project. Had it been worth it? The loss of so many beautiful people. But I couldn’t think about it now. People I’d loved dearly. Stop! I crumbled each time I thought about it.
Parked up always looks bait and I’ve never understood why drug dealers leave their punters waiting. It looks bad. It brings it on top. I tried to look nonchalant. At ease with myself. A guy on a tea break who never felt one of the boys and chose instead to savour their fifteen minutes of freedom alone, in their car.
The steady flow of traffic stopped for a couple of minutes and piercing the silence it left came the bark of a crow. ‘Car, car, car!’ It shouted. Even the urban wildlife was illuminating any surveiling copper that might be studying the coming and going of bedraggled, unemployed, chemically dependant individuals who made their way to her flat, to check out the dodgy looking bloke sat doing nothing in his car. Drug dealing can be invisible to the untrained eye. The street can appear normal. Junkies have the super power of the chameleon. Blending in to the background wallpaper as they waited on benches and bus stops. Or sat like myself, in cars waiting.
“Alright if I jump in? Won’t look so bad if any filth are on the prowl.” Simon, a long term smack head I’d known for years interrupted my anxiety zen. I hadn’t seen him coming. Perhaps he’d been in the bushes that grew alongside the entrance to the stairwell. Biding his time. Much like myself.
“Eh yup Si! Get in. How’s life treating you?”
“Shite. Same old. Didn’t know you were still doing it Skree. I thought you packed it in long ago.”
“You and me both! I had a long break from it. Went travelling with Lipton to get some distance.”
“Lipton! How’s he doing? Owes me 20 quid he does.”
“I think he died. We were down the Caribbean islands and there was a bit of trouble. Pretty sure he’s dead anyway. Long story but I think he drowned.”
“Fuck! Sorry to hear that. Did he give you the 20 quid for me by any chance. Before he croaked, obviously.”
I didn’t answer him. I’d just told him that I’d lost my best mate and all he’s worried about is a 20 spot he’d lost. This is the mentality of the crack and smack head. A complex game of burning people to see if they’ll react and if they don’t they quickly go down the food chain. Irvine Welsh once said that all junkies had the same personality. This is completely untrue and perhaps illustrative of the relatively small period of time and the singularity of location that he took part in the game. I’ve met people from the whole spread of society from the homeless beggar smackhead through tradesmen through it workers through architects, lawyers and into the class that doesn’t need to work being born in to families that hobnob with the most wealthy and royalty. And within each of those layers I’ve met people of incredible intellect, amazing creativity who have fascinating minds. The match of any who choose the straight path. It really is no measure of a man or woman. Granted most of low income are continually on the hustle and solely focused on making the money to score. But once they’ve scored and settled often reveal amazing character. There is a common need there. And the fact it is a shared affliction can mean that an alliance where two work in tandem in the understanding that it is a temporary arrangement that could dissolve if a better situation becomes possible that one can’t bring a second. There is also a lot of lying and bullshit. This charade takes place in all of society where equal dirt is ubiquitous. I was with a middle class girl with money for a while. I moved down south to renovate a derelict cottage I assumed that we would be living in. She never came, sold the cottage the renovation of which had taken a year. Of course I never thought of pay. A years labour was what I was able to contribute. Then she moved to a small town in Somerset and I followed her down there. I developed freinds of my own class and she had a circle of which I believed I was a part. And then she dumped me. Ok, I had developed a heroin habit and needed £30 a day which was nothing, I was successful in my business at the time. And also about an hour a day when I was out scoring. Following our split I assumed that the freinds I had in our circle would still be my friends. But no. She turned the entire group against me. Spread lies about me. She was still visiting me and we discussed everything; all aspects of her life. But she had told them that I was a bad person who was stalking her. And bar a couple they all turned away from me and never asked me my side of the story. I have never seen a junky lie that was so destructive of a persons world. So get this right. Junkies might lie to get a hit but it’s over then. It was just business. There was no intent to destroy a persons friendship circle, just some bullshit to get a tenner. It isn’t personal. It isn’t done to destroy a person’s world and claim all the players as their own.
I have never gotten over losing my second wife. Only once in any humans life do they fall in love to the extent that they open their souls completely and in the movies it is reciprocated and they live happily ever after. In my case I exposed myself completely and fully expected that we would be together for life. Take this and the emotional and spiritual pure exposure that you experience in heroin withdrawal once the bits that films show you, climbing the walls and wailing in pain. Heroin stops the emotional suffering. Morphine is used for pain but it doesn’t exactly stop pain, it lessens the emotional relationship you have to pain. It nullifies all emotional responses that, of course combine with our reason and learning. Once this is taken away the ex junky finds himself with the pure emotional rawness felt by babies. Hence the suffering I was delivered by my ex wife filled me during this kind of emotional rawness. The pain and disillusionment from that is a horrible twisted mass I am past yet I haven’t overcome it. Merely thinking about it like this hurts to the point of psychosis if I linger. So I can only try refocus. I am sat in my car waiting to score with Simon at my side.
“Are you ok Skree. You just drifted off and began crying! Have I done something wrong? Lipton can keep that 20. I know you’re close and it was ages ago.”
“No Si. I’m sorry. I just got thinking about a life I once had. Me and my ex wife had a house just up the hill from here. You might remember. I think I remember you scouting through the gardens, looking for stuff to chore. I was fitting a front door if made, remember?”
“Aye I do. I’d only ever seen you scoring over in Radstock, at Woofy’s, and Rosie’s ! Both dead now.”
So looked down thinking of the lost freinds they had in common.
“I remember that bird you had too. Fit as fuck she was. Straight gower though, wasn’t she?”
“She was mate. Both. In the end she couldn’t do with me having this hobby.”
“Which hobby is that Skree?” Si asked looking genuinely confused.
“The gear….and the white. She’d have her truck load of coke and pills and we’d come back after we’d been raving and fuck for hours. You can’t have both though. The straight bird and the gear”
“You’re not wrong. I got my Mrs in to it and kept her that way.”
Having pretty much exhausted all we had in common we fell in to a silence, waiting for our connect to turn up.
I shouldn’t have got back into this. A habit I felt sure I’d beaten. But you never truly beat it. Only hold it at bay. Once you’ve had a heroin habit your biology is changed. And it only takes a couple or three days, just soothing yourself, and it’s got you again. After all the gang we’d put together did? I doubt I’ll ever feel that camaraderie again.
Lanya had walked up and got into the back of my car without me even noticing her approach. “Drive” she told me and I complied.
“It’s been crawling with filth down here since that young twat died.”
I’d not heard this bit of gossip so I asked who it was and how.
“Johnno, you know that young gypsy lad. Hangs around with big Donald.”
Surely not the teenager he’d had in his car no more than a week ago.
“It’s this gear. Fentanyl in there. I told him to smoke it and not use a pin but him and Donald cooked up a hit. In my fucking stairwell! Anyone could have seen them. They under that bit where the stairs hit the ground floor and there’s a sort of triangular space. I’d served them but I told them to get out. I didn’t want them in my flat in the first place. Donald said he had his hit and went unconscious for half an hour or so. When he came round he found Johnno dead! The cunt only goes and leaves him there. Makes an anonymous call for an ambulance and fucks off! Didn’t think to tell me what had happened. Said he didn’t think they’d connect him to me. He’s only three floors down and he’s got the audacity to have a hit on my stairs. Anyway there’s been coppers everywhere. Knocked on my door. Asking if I’d heard or seen anything. The gypos have put a hit out on whoever tells him where he was buying drugs. Five grand!”
That clearly wasn’t true as Big Donald would have been first in line to dob her in. He’d have done it for 500. A fiver probably. Poor kid though I thought. He was barely out of his teens. I understand why some people who have suffered severe trauma use heroin but the kids who grow up in these posh southern towns have such a great life that I don’t get it. I suppose it’s not that. Who knows what the kid has been through.
“Have you got anywhere you can go stay for a bit. I’d get out of town until things settle down.”
“I’ve only just got to see Rocky again. It’s only a couple of hours every fortnight but it’s something. I have to be here. Have to prove I’ve got a clean flat he can come stay in.”
She’d had her young boy taken off her by social services. She’d already lost a girl she’d had in her teens and now was the other side of the country and she had no interest in getting to know her junky mother who she couldn’t even remember the name of.
“Aye. You don’t want to fuck that up now you’re finally allowed to see him again.”
It begged the question, if her priority was being able to see her son again why was she selling crack and smack to scumbags like Si and Donald…..and me.
Lanya wasn’t a bad kid really. We’d all fallen into it for our own reasons. I honestly felt for her. Must hurt having a child taken off you, for a second time. As smackheads went she was fairly together. Selling it to her small circle of punters meant she was seldom caught short. She made enough to buy decent clothes. Nike trainers, adidas tracky bottoms. Black with the three white stripes. The most popular at the moment. Of course she could be as shifty as any of them. And her apparent complete lack of remorse for the young Johnno who had drifted off to a bliss he never returned from. I couldn’t help but think that the heroin overdose deaths were the easiest of deaths possible. I’d brought a couple of friends back from going over. They never thanked you for saving their lives. Only moaned at how you’d spoiled their hit. Fortunately fentanyl and nitazines were very rare despite the scare posters that were always on the wall of the drug services. The trouble with these new, synthetic opioids was that being so powerful only experts were able to bash it well. All drugs are cut before they get to the likes of us and a crystal the size of a single grain of sugar was enough to kill. Lanya had been given a batch and a couple of people had gone over though this was the first death.
“My phone hasn’t stopped ringing since the kiddie died.”
It was a fact there was no better advert for your product than someone dying from it. Every junky in town would be ringing her.
“You’re lucky you caught me. I’m going to be off for a while. Until the coppers are done round here.”
It was the least painful death possible. Just floating off into a cloud of bliss. I thought of how I had seen Christ blown into a number of pieces. Surely no one could have survived what that mad copper had fired at them. I was deeply tripped out at the time the mass of conger eels had entered the hole the coppers torpedos had created. I saw the boat pulled under by the riptide the demon had created in its hunger for the wealthy bastards inside Bunsens Noah spaceship. The team we had put together were pulled under too and I couldn’t see how anyone could survive that. I’d found myself clinging to a pallet that had been thrown my way from the deck of the stolen boat. In my state I was able only to hold tight and hope that the current would take me towards land. Fortune favoured me and as the chaos unfolded I somehow found myself close to the shore. What followed was one of the most cruel twists of fate that life has ever presented to me. A figure was floundering in the water. Clearly unable to swim the man was flapping his arms and was losing his battle to survive. Rupert Bunsen was about to drown before my eyes. I had seen the people who I loved more than any others on the planet die in the whirlpool created by the eel demon. We had set out to stop the hideous project and certainly the witches and Druids wanted to kill the rich elite who were ready to leave the planet for good. Now the man whose dream it was now despite his fight was sinking. Instinct took over. Laying flat on the palet as it bobbed and rocked I reached down deep and I grabbed the super rich architect of darkness hand and pulled him up. Conscious that if he guessed that I had been amongst the pagan band who collectively had succeeded in ruining his life’s work I put on the most plummy accent I could summon and through the psychedelic shamanic powers I pulled it off. Once safely on sure I managed to pass myself off as a public school boy. I knew Bunsen was an old Etonion so I spun the story that I’d gone to Shrewsbury, a lesser rung of the tower but still a respectable past. I explained that I was one of his clients and due to the funds I’d amassed in the IT boom had been rich enough and more to the point within the most secret of social circles that had been privy to the Noah project. I’d lost my fellow astronauts in the chaos. There were very few who did survive. Most were already aboard and ready for takeoff and only the last few who were still making their way down had come out of the wreckage alive. I felt a sense of guilt in losing those I loved and rescued this most evil of men. Perhaps I should have let him drown. But our mission had never been to kill the rich passengers, only to destroy the project. Of course I knew we would be causing the deaths of many people and I recall the Druids relishing the thought but for me and Lipton, the two shamans whose plan it had been, their deaths were a side effect of the destruction of the spacecraft.
In the days that followed I found myself a guest on Bunsens island. His gratitude in my saving his life found him offering me the run of the place for as long as it would take me to recover and the flight back to England aboard one of his private jets.
For the first few days there I just slept and ate when meals were served. I did not see all of the survivors though I gathered there were over a dozen, perhaps as many as twenty. The mood was dark. I kept my secret well hidden in the full knowledge that were I to be identified as one of the ‘terrorists’ who had ‘murdered’ the friends and associates of the elite super rich my death would have been certain and not quick. A dictator from an African country I had never heard of was unable to contain his anger and four of Bunsens security team who were assembled from ex SAS and similar backgrounds. He was taken away forcibly and no one spoke of him again. Any further complaints were kept quiet. It was not, after all Bunsens fault though I could sense that there would be no refunds.
Most kept to their rooms and only at mealtimes did they gather as a group. They really were a bunch of cunts. A Russian oligarch sat next to an aging rock star. I heard them talk about what had happened but no one really knew what had happened other than some crazy bunch of nutters had come close on a boat followed by another boat piloted by a single highly armed lunatic. In his attempt to torpedo the first boat he had blown a hole into the Noah craft. What took place next no one could describe. As if forming a single creature a vast mass of conger eels powered through the hole consuming the human flesh within. It was as though the eels formed a single slimy mass creature that had a single mind or no mind and just the hunger for flesh.
Weirdest for me was that Bunsen was forming a fondness for me having been the person who saved his life. Despite my reticence he would not leave me alone. So I went to my room. I had lost a girl who I was falling in love with, her friends, the Druid lads from Clun who had become like brothers to us. And Lipton. My best friend. My fellow shaman. We all knew that we might not, further, we were unlikely to survive. And during these quiet moments, despite their loss, I thought “Fucking yes! We fucking did it.” We had pulled off the near impossible. Luck had played a hand. But was it luck? Through a mystical anomaly me and Lipton had been blessed briefly and become the archangels of Poseidon. The gods of old were surely there. Tweaking reality to allow our mission to succeed. And there I lay. Caught up in the ambivalence. Morning my lost friends yet in the full knowledge not one of them would have had it any other way. If I was the only survivor then I must engage with the glory, for all of them. Each had played their part.
When I was sufficiently recovered to be able to travel I bid my goodbye to Bunsen. He implored me to remain in touch. I bid the cunt farewell and boarded his private jet and was soon back on English soil. I had nowhere to go so after hot wiring a van in Surrey where Bunsens plane had landed I returned to Somerset. Here I found the only people I knew were the addicts and street people and was soon back on heroin. I could blame my relapse on the grief for the people I had lost. But deep down, if I’m honest I just like drugs.
“Can you drop me by the train station?”
Si brought me back to earth.
“Course mate. What about you Lanya? Where do you want to be?”
She looked around and for a moment I thought she was going to ask to come with me but she directed me round a loop of roads and I dropped her off close to where I’d picked her up.
“Take care of yourself.”
She said nothing, just smiled and wandered off with her phone ringing. Another punter after the strong gear that had done for young Johnno.
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Saturday, 11 July 2026
Wednesday, 8 July 2026
Tuesday, 7 July 2026
Stairwell moths
One over in the flats across the way and another one on the outside of our stairwell window
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Saturday, 4 July 2026
The wall by the bins
In the small hours we heard loud music as a neighbour of ours, I’m not saying who as I’ve done my fair share of damage by accident, drove drunk back into his parking space and misjudged his approach. I heard the bump then went back to sleep. The wall is buckled and broken and a gentle push or a decent wind will see it all tumble down. Maybe I’ll go push it down tomorrow. Someone needs to as it’s a time bomb that could crush a child or pensioner or even an able bodied adult when it finally crumbles. I don’t want to get the blame or drop anyone into any trouble as I’m no grass but it needs pushing over and rebuilding. Maybe I’ll have a quiet word with the guy who is a good friend and we can push it over together so no one gets hurt. Then we can put it back together securely. I was thinking earlier about how they’re raising the pension age as people live longer but those of us who have had a normal attitude to drink and drugs and smoking are having to pay for these ‘recovery’ and health fanatic idiots. We’re all paying for these health nuts to live an extra pointless decade or two of fallow years, not doing anything and out of touch with contemporary thought. Contributing nothing to humanity. I mean you can barely stagger out of an all night drinking spot, rave or gambling den without some idiot in a vest and a pair of shorts tearing past knocking into you on some charity run. This Savilean behaviour has no place in the country I want to live in. …er…..except sir Kevin Sinfield of course. Highest points scorer for the greatest rugby team of either code, single handedly raising millions for the MND community in Rob Burrows memory. Fellow team mates of Leeds golden era.
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Tuesday, 30 June 2026
Stairwell moths
Riband wave just outside the back door at 12:45 tonight. See if he’s still there in the morning to get a better photo
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Stairwell moths
Willow beauty. Spotted today in the same stairwell as the box tree moth which has moved to just inside the slightly open skylight so should be able to get out to play whenever it wants.
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Monday, 29 June 2026
Box tree moth
This one I spotted in a friend’s stairwell and I’d never seen it before. I didn’t take the photos as we went up to her flat as I knew it would seem weird. I doubt that she would have noticed the moth but to me it was a gem. I left on my own and took a few photos. In my two main books from which I do identification neither had this moth. My phone has an ap that identifies moths though I seldom use it preferring the old school way. It is a migrant that was first spotted in England in 2008 and my books were printed before then. I don’t know how common it is but climate change has seen species drifting north as they are now able to lead successful lives here. This attractive moth is beautiful in its own way and spotting it made my day.
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Thursday, 25 June 2026
Stairwell moths
Box tree moth. New invasive species. No doubt unpopular with brexiteerz. But fuck! What a beautiful moth
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Stairwell moths
Box tree moth. Invasive species first seen in Britain in 2008. First seen by me in 2026.
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chapter 7; Lipton and Christ reunite
chapter 7; Lipton and Christ reunite
Though the steady build up of traffic that began at about 4am had not troubled Lipton a rustling and muttered swearing did. Throughout the night the odd vehicle had spun around his island of safety and Lipton snuggled in to himself and finally as rush hour coagulated into a homogeneous mush of sound he lost consciousness. The crack had been a daft idea and like all stimulants precluded the loss of self most seek at the end of the day. Someone was on his roundabout and an itinerant life had taught him that virtually no one went in amongst the bushes and trees that were scattered around the centre of these islands that had so often provided a safe, untroubled campsite. Only the annual strimming and pruning but the chance of catching this council workers day out were 364 to 1. A stench of rotting flesh overwhelmed the street shaman, so repugnant he involuntarily retched though brought up nothing from his stomach. Lipton had learned to keep down ayuashka, something even the most highly powered of his profession never mastered. Nevertheless the reek of putrefaction was troubling.
Keeping frozen Lipton readied his hunting knife. Rupert Bunsen may well have survived the demonic explosion that saw his Noah project destroyed by the collective he and Skree had drawn together. The Druids and Witches alongside the two shamanic brothers had not all survived but it was without doubt that serious forces would by now be hunting them down. The achievement had been a historic strike against the grey that he and Skree had committed to fighting, both in the full knowledge that they would most likely be ultimately killed. The pagan mystics had their battles and won more than they were due. Someday they would be caught. It was inevitable. Lipton thought Skree may have survived but it was unlikely. The lonely trip back alongside the Druid lad he had grown close to had felt like they were the last two. Only the sackful of body parts they had salvaged, a gruesome jigsaw of a man and Jack of Clun had left him there in Porlock Weir, the only other who may have survived. He knew not even that the meat had made it to the traveller site. And Lipton had no clue if the man he had become something like a freind to, could endlessly overcome death.
“Lipton, you cunt! Show yourself! It’s your old freind, the one and only, son of god! Jesus Christ! I’m back and this time I’m fucking Righteous!”
Oh fuck! Thought Lipton. How the fuck had the lamb of god found him? How the fuck did he do any of his tricks for that matter. There was no sense in hiding given he’d homed in on him despite his best efforts to hide away.
“I’m over here! But don’t think you’re getting a hug! Pleased as I am to see that you’re still alive you’re clearly some way off full reanimation!”
“Ha, ha, ha!” Cackled Jesus, “you don’t look too clever yourself!”
Lipton could see Christ was still on the mend. His matted hair was drawn across his cheek in a failing attempt to see the exposed jaw and rictus grin of teeth. The eye on that side of his face was a milky globe , its mechanism exposed. Choosing to look at the old tramp from his ‘good’ side, Lipton was able to keep a grip on the impulse to vomit.
“What the fuck happened to me! I’ve been on some benders in my time….well I’ve been on one really, but it has lasted over 2000 years. But I have absolutely no memory of what happened. I remember the journey across the sea with all the crew, but from there I have no recollection whatsoever! I came to over a period of months. Stuck in a fucking trailer, back on Crankshafts site. That cunt has never got over the excellent and outstanding performance of a sexual nature to reinvigorate his and his Mrs love life! I wish I’d never bothered for all the thanks I get. Soon as the old physical repair work was done I came out and left them to it. Miserable cunts! You’d think they’d have a few bevvies ready but just like usual. It’s me who has to get the drinks in. Talking of which,” and with a theatrical sweep of his hand, Christ did his famous party piece and swung two unlabelled bottles of wine, “red or white?”
Lipton took the white, plunged the cork using a clipper lighter and took a long , deep draughty.
“Well, Jesus Christ, do you remember a lunatic, armed to the teeth that came in pursuit of our merry bunch?”
Jesus shook his head looking genuinely bemused.
“Well, we had a bit of luck! The Clun Witches had summoned up a conger eel, demon hybrid. Like a writhing mass of eels, the thickness of your arm, but en mass something like the length and width of a small train of maybe three carriages. You were blown into a number of pieces just before the action. The crazed copper blew a hole into the Noah spacecraft that housed roughly the thousand wealthiest people on the planet and the demon conger eel hybrid ate the fucking lot of them! Well, a few got away. Bunsen himself I think but in all the chaos I don’t know who lived but I do know most died. Me and Brock, we hung around for a couple of days, we gathered together what we could find of you, then we thought we’d best get out of there. Clearly anyone alive was on Bunsen island and any chance they got they’d be coming to kill us. So we sailed home. I was sectioned and I’ve not long been out of the mental health institution. Good to see you’re on the mend, mind.”
Christ looked at ground before him and shook his head. “Sounds like I missed the party. What about Skree? I take it……”
“Sadly so. There’s no way that any of our lot survived, bar Brock and yourself, of course.”
Lipton had seen Christ off his face. The man was always having a laugh. Never took anything too seriously. It was the character trait that made the man bareable. His personality could be incredibly irritating and he had no concern about the damage and hurt he caused with his endless womanising. His seemingly insatiable appetite for sex and drugs and the desire to keep the party going, forever if he could. The lord of the dance, some had called him. And Lipton considered and could not think of a single instance where the man had been self reflective. But, here, in the centre of a roundabout, outside of Bridgewater, Lipton saw tears. Only the briefest of trickle, but as lorry and car circled around them, invisible through the trees and bushes, Lipton knew that Christ had loved them. Loved those who had risked everything and most had paid the ultimate price, in their collective mission to stop the richest, greediest people. If he had a single value he held precious, beyond all other it was that money, and those who sought it out, those who set up banks outside the temple, money was the least valuable commodity that we have.
Lipton gathered some dried twigs, stirred around in the embers from last night’s first and got flame. And so the two brothers sat opposite each other, drinking their wine in silence, thinking of their fallen freinds.
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Wednesday, 24 June 2026
Monday, 22 June 2026
Friday, 19 June 2026
Thursday, 18 June 2026
Skree part 24. Claire comes out to the field with me and Bentley
https://youtu.be/S5pcrCJkwOM?is=1s5uAyRAObffKjHW Sent from my iPhone
The last days of my business
Michael wainwrights shamanic wood working course week 2 par https://youtu.be/GXD41gkDkjU Sent from my iPhone
Monday, 8 June 2026
Thursday, 4 June 2026
Skree part 23. Pavlov part 1. The revenge on the Alsatian bully’s
https://youtu.be/rFFqTtSIQMo?si=IG6bBCR7GIfjFFm6 Sent from my iPhone
Wednesday, 3 June 2026
Monday, 1 June 2026
Wednesday, 27 May 2026
Tuesday, 26 May 2026
chapter 7; Lipton and Christ reunite
chapter 7; Lipton and Christ reunite
Though the steady build up of traffic that began at about 4am had not troubled Lipton a rustling and muttered swearing did. Throughout the night the odd vehicle had spun around his island of safety and Lipton snuggled in to himself and finally as rush hour coagulated into a homogeneous mush of sound he lost consciousness. The crack had been a daft idea and like all stimulants precluded the loss of self most seek at the end of the day. Someone was on his roundabout and an itinerant life had taught him that virtually no one went in amongst the bushes and trees that were scattered around the centre of these islands that had so often provided a safe, untroubled campsite. Only the annual strimming and pruning but the chance of catching this council workers day out were 364 to 1. A stench of rotting flesh overwhelmed the street shaman, so repugnant he involuntarily retched though brought up nothing from his stomach. Lipton had learned to keep down ayuashka, something even the most highly powered of his profession never mastered. Nevertheless the reek of putrefaction was troubling.
Keeping frozen Lipton readied his hunting knife. Rupert Bunsen may well have survived the demonic explosion that saw his Noah project destroyed by the collective he and Skree had drawn together. The Druids and Witches alongside the two shamanic brothers had not all survived but it was without doubt that serious forces would by now be hunting them down. The achievement had been a historic strike against the grey that he and Skree had committed to fighting, both in the full knowledge that they would most likely be ultimately killed. The pagan mystics had their battles and won more than they were due. Someday they would be caught. It was inevitable. Lipton thought Skree may have survived but it was unlikely. The lonely trip back alongside the Druid lad he had grown close to had felt like they were the last two. Only the sackful of body parts they had salvaged, a gruesome jigsaw of a man and Jack of Clun had left him there in Porlock Weir, the only other who may have survived. He knew not even that the meat had made it to the traveller site. And Lipton had no clue if the man he had become something like a freind to, could endlessly overcome death.
“Lipton, you cunt! Show yourself! It’s your old freind, the one and only, son of god! Jesus Christ! I’m back and this time I’m fucking Righteous!”
Oh fuck! Thought Lipton. How the fuck had the lamb of god found him? How the fuck did he do any of his tricks for that matter. There was no sense in hiding given he’d homed in on him despite his best efforts to hide away.
“I’m over here! But don’t think you’re getting a hug! Pleased as I am to see that you’re still alive you’re clearly some way off full reanimation!”
“Ha, ha, ha!” Cackled Jesus, “you don’t look too clever yourself!”
Lipton could see Christ was still on the mend. His matted hair was drawn across his cheek in a failing attempt to see the exposed jaw and rictus grin of teeth. The eye on that side of his face was a milky globe , its mechanism exposed. Choosing to look at the old tramp from his ‘good’ side, Lipton was able to keep a grip on the impulse to vomit.
“What the fuck happened to me! I’ve been on some benders in my time….well I’ve been on one really, but it has lasted over 2000 years. But I have absolutely no memory of what happened. I remember the journey across the sea with all the crew, but from there I have no recollection whatsoever! I came to over a period of months. Stuck in a fucking trailer, back on Crankshafts site. That cunt has never got over the excellent and outstanding performance of a sexual nature to reinvigorate his and his Mrs love life! I wish I’d never bothered for all the thanks I get. Soon as the old physical repair work was done I came out and left them to it. Miserable cunts! You’d think they’d have a few bevvies ready but just like usual. It’s me who has to get the drinks in. Talking of which,” and with a theatrical sweep of his hand, Christ did his famous party piece and swung two unlabelled bottles of wine, “red or white?”
Lipton took the white, plunged the cork using a clipper lighter and took a long , deep draughty.
“Well, Jesus Christ, do you remember a lunatic, armed to the teeth that came in pursuit of our merry bunch?”
Jesus shook his head looking genuinely bemused.
“Well, we had a bit of luck! The Clun Witches had summoned up a conger eel, demon hybrid. Like a writhing mass of eels, the thickness of your arm, but en mass something like the length and width of a small train of maybe three carriages. You were blown into a number of pieces just before the action. The crazed copper blew a hole into the Noah spacecraft that housed roughly the thousand wealthiest people on the planet and the demon conger eel hybrid ate the fucking lot of them! Well, a few got away. Bunsen himself I think but in all the chaos I don’t know who lived but I do know most died. Me and Brock, we hung around for a couple of days, we gathered together what we could find of you, then we thought we’d best get out of there. Clearly anyone alive was on Bunsen island and any chance they got they’d be coming to kill us. So we sailed home. I was sectioned and I’ve not long been out of the mental health institution. Good to see you’re on the mend, mind.”
Christ looked at ground before him and shook his head. “Sounds like I missed the party. What about Skree? I take it……”
“Sadly so. There’s no way that any of our lot survived, bar Brock and yourself, of course.”
Lipton had seen Christ off his face. The man was always having a laugh. Never took anything too seriously. It was the character trait that made the man bareable. His personality could be incredibly irritating and he had no concern about the damage and hurt he caused with his endless womanising. His seemingly insatiable appetite for sex and drugs and the desire to keep the party going, forever if he could. The lord of the dance, some had called him. And Lipton considered and could not think of a single instance where the man had been self reflective. But, here, in the centre of a roundabout, outside of Bridgewater, Lipton saw tears. Only the briefest of trickle, but as lorry and car circled around them, invisible through the trees and bushes, Lipton knew that Christ had loved them. Loved those who had risked everything and most had paid the ultimate price, in their collective mission to stop the richest, greediest people. If he had a single value he held precious, beyond all other it was that money, and those who sought it out, those who set up banks outside the temple, money was the least valuable commodity that we have.
Lipton gathered some dried twigs, stirred around in the embers from last night’s first and got flame. And so the two brothers sat opposite each other, drinking their wine in silence, thinking of their fallen freinds.
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Monday, 25 May 2026
Sunday, 24 May 2026
Saturday, 23 May 2026
Tuesday, 19 May 2026
Stickleback
As a boy we would catch small fish; minnows and sticklebacks that instead of having a traditional dorsal fin opted for a run of spikes. From memory I think the ones we caught were three spined sticklebacks though I have some deeply buried dream of a fifteen spined version. This may have been a fantasy, an old wives tale shared by prepubescent boys. But the name seemed appropriate as a title for a piece of furniture I made for an exhibition I took part in. Whilst at college I’d made a table that was something of a folly but came from noticing how plants would grow through tarmac. Men plastered down their dull, black tarry pavement in belligerent triumph over nature but we all secretly knew that they didn’t stand a chance. Men may try to freeze a moment and dictate the direction of pedestrians but true paths form in wayward fashion. The collective mind wove intricate, unruly stray lines that were beyond the reason of a single urban planner. Meanwhile the pavements blistered and burst as life took its own initiative and did as it pleased. The table top I made was in oak and had small black shoots of bog oak that mimicked the growth through tarmac. The table top was a rejected idea but a curious diversion from what I saw as a rule to be broken. Of course I was wrong. Tables have flat tops with good reason. Nevertheless, having recognised my folly and being of a contrarian nature I dug in deeper. My girlfriend of the time was working in a hot glass studio and on a weekend she had access to a great facility. I asked her to make me a run of lead crystal spikes ranging from small four inch to larger ones nearly a foot in length. I carved a top from American black walnut that mitred into side panels. Beneath the top I built a maple box that housed a strip light. The glass spikes were housed into holes that allowed the light to travel up through the glass spikes which worked something like a fibre optic. The piece was of no practical use but worked as a light sculpture that glowed quietly. Who can claim that they’ve never been tempted to make a table with lead crystal glowing spikes bursting out of its back. Like a frozen burst of machine gun fire. Looking back I can still recall the impulse to create domestic monsters. Furniture is largely made to comfort yet sometimes the temptation to terrify is an impulse I have been unable to resist.
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Monday, 11 May 2026
The Fourth Act - Filthy Rich (Official Music Video)
https://youtu.be/K09S0887pU4?si=5QUpGRR7lfW7Fw5E My nephews band’s first single. The sound of summer 2026 Sent from my iPhone
Tuesday, 5 May 2026
mental health
mental health
Sometimes I go through periods of time where my anxiety gets very intense and I experience a deep terror of social interaction of any kind. Even with my closest friends. In fact it is particularly with my closest friends that I find the hardest. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it’s the person I pretend to be becomes a lie. I don’t want people to think that I’m a failure. The person I present as myself proves to be a fake. A construct created and molded to satisfy what I believe the freind would hold in the highest regard. I can remember my father telling lies to big himself up when the man who he was would have more than sufficed. And I have become the same. What I had always been determined not to be. To learn from his mistakes. Yet I have fallen in to being the same duplicitous deceiver. Whether it be financial security that I don’t really have. Whether it be success in my chosen field. Fear that my home is not as impressive as I imagine the freinds expectation might be. Why would anyone lie about who they are? Why does the fear of disappointing people, people that I love, keep me from seeing them.
I tried my best to be good at what I do and maybe I became a competent craftsman. Deep down I know that I have made far more decent furniture than just about any of my peers yet it still feels like I failed. I never had the mental strength to be successful. The more I learn about narcissists and sociopaths the more I see the pomposity of the game I chose as a career. The last stint of work was a five year blast that left me broken. My life is punctuated with periods of intense energy and work that careen out of control and crash into a mental breakdown. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve had now. Maybe five. Each time worse than the last. The first serious one came in the years after university. I’d mastered that system and qualified with a first. What a fool I’d been. Competing in a narrow system for three years. Each project we’d see who could score the highest marks. I’d been one of the top in my year. I recall the pompous swagger as I’d strut around, glowing in seeing my name top or close after a project. What a stupid idea to put the marks up like the football league at the end of the workshop. And I remember the excitement that Ian Douglas had when he rang me to let me know that I had a first. I was alone in a cottage in a part of the country where I knew virtually no one. How hollow I felt. Realising how fully I had fallen for a myth. No group any more where this would have any meaning. And I have never been asked what I got by anyone. Admittedly I never got seriously into academia where it might have been of some consequence.
I’d seen one part of the myth at my first college. The generation of designer makers who I had admired and aspired to be like were not able to support themselves without a rich family, a rich spouse or a teaching position at one of the universities that perpetuated the myth. So knowing this I tried to become a lecturer. I had various places where I worked; Shrewsbury College, university of Wolverhampton, Buckinghamshire college, Swindon, guest spots at Parnham, Jacob Kramer and others. But I was not good at communicating with people on the whole. I couldn’t sell them a product I did not believe in. And the pressure I felt led to my first serious breakdown. My girlfriend at the time, in who I had put total belief, abandoning my home community to join her. Or so I believed. She bought a derelict cottage that I renovated. She told me that she would be moving there once she had finished the glass course she did after completing her fine art degree. But she never came. I was alone, working on the cottage, making ways to live in an inward looking county that had little interest in incomers. The support of a network of friends and a partner was not there. So I turned to drink. Having no training as a teacher I was asked to be a lecturer at Wolverhampton, I applied for a job at the University of central England and finally the last day was taken up by the only college that I felt even remotely comfortable at Shrewsbury. Five and a half days a week. I was paid more then than I have ever got since. Of course my girlfriend decided to go work in a glass studio instead of coming to live in the cottage she had bought. What ever gave me the idea that she would buy a cottage, have me restore it and come live there.
So I drank until I broke. I ran away down to Somerset where she lived and tried to recover. In the end I was just in the way to her now. I went to work for Fred. He saved me then. Along with Gareth. But I can’t bring myself to see them now.
I managed to compromise on what I would do. A connection I got through my girlfriend’s father became my patron. Other makers I knew thought I had it lucky. Perhaps I did. I found I could make decent quality furniture and make a living at it. But I was still deluded. What I now understand is narcissistic and sociopathic behaviour seduced me. I believed that I had a magic touch. That I was somehow special. There’s a spectrum and perhaps Tracy Emin is at the apex. A belief that you are special. That the emotion you invest into the creation of objects invests them with magic. That an unmade bed is a great work of art. That so important are her feelings, above and beyond the feelings of common people, that any presentation of matter is of great value. Fine furniture may be a few degrees of self delusion below the work of conceptual artists but essentially it is the same thing. To succeed in that world. The world of exhibitions of pure narcissistic sociopathy that the creators of this stuff are exceptional beings. To succeed the artist must have a self belief of complete conviction. They have to be able to talk to collectors fully believing that the objects that they sell are invested with magic.
But I knew deep down, even though I dare not admit it to myself, that I am not special. Further than that, I know too that my peers in that world are also delusional narcissists.
And so again I crumbled. My girlfriend was long gone. I’d followed her, abandoning my home, family and friends till the world I had left had disappeared. Evaporated as all circles of people do after a time. And I found myself stranded. Not really accepted in the world I now found myself in and lost from my home.
From alcohol I drifted off into harder drugs. My business lasted a couple of decades.
In a broken state I gave up on everything. Left only with my trade skills I understood what it means to be working class. Having only your labour to give until you fade away.
A couple of years of mental illness where I was unable to work followed. The only friends I had were the other broken people whose common denominator is drugs and drink.
There’s more. Other bits of work like the museum fitting and more complex drug addictions.
I became a failed artist. Still delusional and narcissistic but with no evidence to support my belief in the magic I had thought was in my touch.
There is another chapter. The humility I faced and became the maker for a much younger boss. I can say how I took his business, through my skills to a new level. How I helped him design his workshop and together we fine tuned his business to create the objects for another narcissistic sociopath who had a greater self belief than either of us. I worked too hard. Continued with some of my own work. Pushed myself until again I broke. This time doctors and mental health professionals told me that I had to stop if I wanted to live much longer.
And in this broken state I have too much pride to admit that it was all for nothing. That I’m isolated and ashamed to talk to my closest friends. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I don’t have the strength of character to show you just how broken I’ve become.
And I think I’m just about done now. I’m sorry for letting you all down.
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Russell Brand & Other Famous Narcissists: An Expert Analysis by Psychopa...
https://youtu.be/6OGewZeI86s?si=K7gR0hSiZMbaYOYb Best breakdown of Brand following his recent two interviews promoting his new book with Piers Morgan and another. I found it similar to the Emily Maitliss Prince Andrew interview in that both believed that they had been successful in clearing things up when in fact to any impartial observer they had clearly dug a deeper hole. Further I found it eye opening into myself and other ‘artists’ who I have always thought they were engaged in a kind of, what we would have called ‘showing off’, a term I seldom hear these days but this is a far more articulate explanation than I have ever managed. Sent from my iPhone
Stairwell beetles
A couple of may bugs just outside the back door. Nice big beetles. Always amazes me how they can find each other.
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Stairwell moths
Pug. Common Pug maybe but it’s a guess. Usually a less homogeneous marking but I could well be wrong.
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Monday, 4 May 2026
Thursday, 30 April 2026
Skree part 22. Wellsway Colliery accident 1838
https://youtu.be/CWOnpS6NbtU?si=YSgjwp8WFR2vBK64 Sent from my iPhone
Friday, 24 April 2026
Lipton returns
Lipton returns
I don’t know how many people read the two books that I posted on my blog a few years ago. I kept the ending of the second one to myself with a view to having it published. In a sense you have to read the first one to understand the second though it stands up on its own. It requires serious rewriting and editing and is very much a first draft but I have never read anything like it. My character is Skree but also Peter. Lipton is the costar and is based on a freind. His name came when the predictive texting wanted to put Lipton instead of his real nickname despite me spelling it correctly. I also didn’t want him to know that I’d used his character in a story. Maybe I’ll tell him one day. A lot of the scenes were real and actually happened but we aren’t really shamen or archangels. We did sneak past security and climb the last gas silo frame in Bath. We did drive up to Leeds and climb moortown water tower. We did psychedelics on cley hill and watched a partial eclipse. We did a lot of things that are in the first book but there’s a layer of fantasy on top. We never met up with Jesse Presley in the underground tunnels we explored and there was no subterranean rock and roll empire of which he was king.
Anyway last week the character I based Lipton on who I hadn’t seen for years turned up and he stayed and we talked and drank. His son is in the village next to ours, less than two miles away. Lipton wants to be in his life and has pulled himself out of addiction and is doing all the right things to be a part of his life and watch him grow. This means he’ll be here a lot. It was me who got the daft ideas like breaking into sealed tunnel networks and climbing industrial buildings. But without him I don’t have the bravery. We egg each other on and he’s always up for an adventure, say a drive deep into wales to explore slate mine tunnels. He doesn’t get why I am drawn to doing these things but he always has the bottle. There’s so much work we need to do now he’s back. We did used to buy action man figures for our missions. Two were hung from the water tower and were still there last time I passed it. We also buried an action man each, two feet beneath the soil at the stone circle Michael Evis had built. It was our signature. On all serious adventures we would choose an action man each and hang them, bury them, burn them; use them up to mark our work in appropriate ways. The figures represent us and we sacrifice them to seal the hoodoo of our exploits. The last two were put to sea at a beach near us and we watched the small figures in the boat we had made for them slowly grow smaller until our eyes saw two dots before they disappeared completely. There are some great water towers ear here and we will be getting our action men ready for our mission. Because now he is back in my life our competitive nature will no doubt have us up to our ritual exploration again and testing each other as to how committed to ridiculous endeavours the other is. It’s something that we can’t not do. Lipton is now in his mid fifties and I am sixty so we won’t be able to do what we used to. We are older men now but both still have a yearning for ridiculous missions. Readers may have read the first chapters of book three that picks up in the aftermath of our destruction of Rupert Bunsens Noah project and the Witchfynder general is hunting us down. We are separated having been flung off in different directions. Both of us know that not everyone has survived. Lipton has so far left the mental hospital following his sectioning, Jesus has reanimated having been smashed in to many pieces. Of course he can’t be killed and has been reborn many times since his heyday covered in the New Testament gospels and is back living on traveller site in Somerset. I am not yet written about but spoiler alert I survived the carnage of the conger eel demon hybrids. Only one of the Clun Druids survived and there’s no sign of the coven of witches who summoned up the sea goddess who is the group mind of the conger demon hybrid shoal. My friend Jason Feddy has just had his book published and you can put in a preorder on Amazon now. So I think it’s time that I sorted out my book and get it out there. It’s a lot of work but there is nothing like it and I believe it would be a popular cult book. There’s so much to do. I’m already following the characters in the aftermath but I need to go through all of the first two books and tidy them up. Welcome back into our lives Lipton.
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Thursday, 23 April 2026
The Fourth Act - Filthy Rich (Official Music Video)
https://youtu.be/K09S0887pU4?si=un-wnUxHStBdAr4a my nephews band Sent from my iPhone
Friday, 17 April 2026
Skree part 21. At home waiting for Lipton
https://youtube.com/shorts/rDuyIU1aLho?si=h27jbrZTgJkKn2yt Sent from my iPhone
Thursday, 16 April 2026
Monday, 13 April 2026
Restoring Calum’s ice cream rickshaw with Tom and Paul
https://youtube.com/shorts/S7vEq9vN4mI?si=1QyxQWKDp-mu8pwR Sent from my iPhone
Thursday, 2 April 2026
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