The Modern History of Myself and Hats

February 1997:
When I was ten years old I had this green, felt one with tassels at certain corners. It had cost my parents £20, which I still think is a decent chunk of money. I took it away with me to Italy, on a school trip to the Alps, because that’s why my parents had spent a decent chunk of money on it.
For my parents this trip symbolised a success, in a way, they had worked hard and managed to achieve a better standard of living, for their children, than they had had.
They were certain that ‘I was going to really enjoy it’.
And I did
Until I lost the hat.
I felt like I’d bulldozed my parents’ efforts and that if they too saw the symbol of the hat they might want to cry. From now on I was to appreciate home and its affiliates.
Thanks to that and the fact that Stuart Yorston told me my parents had died in a car crash that night I became homesick.

October 2002:
The next hat I owned cost £2.50 more. It was an old bowler with a red lining. You’d like it- it was very likable, I should know – I liked it. (In hindsight) It represented a time, a place and a nascent frame of mind. The vine of a frame of mind I wind today. There are a couple of photographs of me wearing the hat, there were a couple of photographs and then it had served its purpose. The hat had come to be a confidence for my creative conviction. I had a mop of hair.
But soon I wasn’t so sure,
Since then the hat has had various retirement homes and display cases, though rarely on my head. These days it usually rests; crucified on a novelty, foam raspberry in the living room.

Summer 2005:
The third had been Jo’s hat: a black, corduroy, railway flat cap (cool as fuck). I pinched it off her because it suited me, especially when I wore my maroon polo shirt and an accompanying black tie and when college ended and university began it came with me to Edinburgh. (Jo said I should take it to remind me of her & when our relationship stumbled to a halt she reiterated this. And so it did.).
One night I wore it to work. That night where me & Senior were hosting the quiz and Kristoff gave us a whole bottle of Apple Sourz to drink. Sometime later I couldn’t find the hat.
I was rather disappointed: It suited me.
It was sometime after that, in the same place, I saw the hat once more. This time it was on the head of an Australian lesbian. After thinking about it for a bit I asked her:
‘Excuse me’, I said, ‘where did you find that hat?’
‘Under my bed’, she said. And perhaps she had.

June 2007:
It was the last day with my sweet for a while and after much deliberation in front of a mirror I bought the hat. A straw, slightly panama job from C & A’s in Budapest. It was almost small but suited my mane/mood and ‘too small’’s better than ‘too big’, surely? Anyway Rosie said she found me attractive in it and that helped my decision. After leaving her in that subway I had almost already decided that the hat had to return home on my head so’s Rosie could find me attractive, in the hat once more. By the time I arrived in Kyiv the hat had developed into a symbol, a symbol of my love and my faith in said love, a comfort should homesickness return.
I preserved it from the Ukraine and Moscow to the Trans-Siberian express. Here it perched above my bunk, over the bedside light, placed there, most likely, by The Trader. I remember well, Thom’s hayfever had been playing up and on The Traders’ suggestion we swapped beds, in order to let Thom sleep out of the pollenful breeze. On the third night, (the second on the others’ bed) I awoke to find the hat was missing.
The Hat!
I hunted around, frantically, with my eyes for any sign of straw and there it was peeking out from behind Thom’s arse- crumpled, beaten and no longer an attractive accessory. The Trader attempted to straighten it out and look proud at his hopeless attempts, Thom laughed.

Keyboa: a dilemma

(Originally published at Counter Hive in April of 1786)

To whom it may concern,

I have been asked on numerous occasions in recent weeks, months, years, etc. about the ethics of music making by keyboa, specifically by electric keyboa. The commonly accepted definition, I feel I should make clear, of the keyboa is, as concluded at the 19** Seminar, "a metally snake that lives in keyholes" and "can be Manipulated to make melodious sounds". The two principal schools of thought on the harnessing of the electric keyboa are as follows;

i) The very nature of the keyboa ("a metally snake that lives in keyholes"), when coupled with the notion of "[Manipulation] to make melodious sounds", leads the mainstream of counter-Advance scholars to call for unambiguous prohibition of music making by keyboa, in particular by electric keyboa, for reasons of a perceived correlation between the required method (see "Metasynthesis and You: A Beginner's Guide [19**]) and certain principles of the proto-Advance, especially in the field of Control.

ii) A more maverick, but steadily growing school of thought would have it that, rather than being merely neutral in active terms of the Cause, music making by keyboa can actually be beneficial to counter-Advance. There is evidence, albeit broadly disputed (by the aforementioned mainstream) evidence, that points to the electric keyboa being in the region of 30% more organic than, for instance, the violin, and the acoustic, or "bare" keyboa being as much as 40% more organic, purportedly on account of their reptilian roots. There is seldom any suggestion in counter-Advance circles that music is anything less than an invaluable weapon against Human Advance, and, if the statistics cited above are even vaguely accurate, the central argument proffered by this second lobby, that the pros significantly outweigh the cons in any responsibly practiced music making endeavour by keyboa, electric or otherwise, might carry sufficient weight to make, at very least, a full enquiry by the relevant authorities into the potential efficacy of an official keyboa music making programme a viable route forward as regards this particular issue.

I hope that this humble memorandum has shed a little light on what perhaps needn’t be so divisive a topic as the keyboa question currently is. Please send all enquiries through the usual channels,

Yours in conscience,

Sir P----

He Emerged From The East

A repetition:

The word 'aslan' is a fine word. You may well associate said word with a popular lion, famed for being somewhat like Jesus, only fair-haired, of a name similar in all but capitalisation. (That lion is called 'Aslan'. Smashing fellow, by all accounts). Well, your association of 'aslan' with 'Aslan' is well-founded, though you don't yet know it. See, the word 'aslan', or so my sources inform me, translates from the Turkish to 'lion'.

To rephrase, my point of information is as follows;

"Aslan is Turkish for lion."

Happy Trails, and may your next point of information also be a translation from the Turkish Tongue (Tongue of Turkishes).

Regards and Peaches,

Billy

In An Automated Fashion

Veins

In a couple of million years (a pretty short time when you think about it), The New Dinosaurs will find some pretty excellent veins of aluminium ore on the sites of what The Middle Dinosaurs called “Landfill Sites”. Great towns will spring up around these most fruitful of veins, they’ll prosper, with all the New Dinosaur amenities, until the sources dry up and the towns begin to wither and die. There’ll be some real doldrums economically speaking before the service sector saves the day.

Aluminium will be shipped in while the residents write out receipts. It’s a pity there was no lightning back then, else they’d have had electric typewriters, Earth* willing.

*Steve, as they called her

“I wouldn’t… but I’m going to”

There’s none of what we (often quaintly) call rivalry among The New Dinosaurs; on the contrary, there’s a great communalism in their society, coupled inextricably with a pioneering spirit that would put our 18^th and 19^th Centuries to shame. It was quite by accident (with, of course, the requisite quotient of pure New Dinosaur Vigilance) that they (that’s they collectively) unlocked the secrets of Fusion. I shan’t bore you with detail, suffice it to say that it was most unfortunate, not to say ethically unwarranted, that the end came about; The New Dinosaurs cannot be blamed by any reasonable court of law. Natural curiosity can never be condemned, and it was and it was an unforeseeable happenstance that launched Steve into the Sun* while the rockets crept eventually into the orbit of the shoe factory where Mars used to be.

By this time aluminium could be synthesised quite easily and in an automated fashion.

*Croquet

Henry and Sex

Henry the Bruiser, with muscles on his elbows, took to anal penetration like a kipper to water, grateful but late; he feared the social side and always felt a longing, whatever the dildo, a scarcely definable longing that led him dimensionally speaking through the gamut, the whole catalogue of mortally crafted penetrative devices, even the novelty items. No length nor girth nor knobble, no jazzy composition of vibrations could bring him any comfort, any certitude. With heavy heart but an almost admirable single-mindedness, Henry resolved to craft himself the ultimate phallic companion with diesel-powered vibrations; he used the finest, most rarefied latex, a mould scaled up from the finest from Shergar’s bloodline, and he spent some seven years building and perfecting this most glorious erection. When the scaffolding came down it stood, in all its meticulous detail, at ninety-seven feet in height to the inch and a good twelve feet in diameter at its thickest point. When he swallowed it whole he could never have said where it touched him, but it most certainly felt like Heaven.

Dick Knockers, Sex Detective. Chapter 1.

Dick thoughtfully packed his trunk. Every assignment presented unique challenges and this case was no different. Predictably he would need clothes. But what sort he wondered. He checked the BBC five day forecast and packed some woolly sweaters. Glasgow was particularly cold this week.

Dick slammed his door and swooped his coat on his way out. He'd spent a good hour in the shop test driving coats to ensure the perfect swoop. Finally he had settled for an ex-navy great coat. He liked the epilettes.

The train journey gave him the opportunity to put his mind in order. He thought back to the can of lager, the sofa in his living room and the FA cup final and the phone call that made him miss the winner.

The Chimneys of Orthodox Churches

The Chimneys of Orthodox Churches
March Larch & Birch over me
In production lines
its crooks with Salts of the Earth
& clogs its pews with incense or slate.

Dynamo spat out Virgins with Children with Halos
Make a stark, (old) contrast with me,
Especially when they're dimly lit.
Unfolding my arm at my elbow I could brush one.

But I wouldn't: I'm choking on inscence
At the part where the 2/4 thumps.
And you weren't round that corner I pictured
Only concrete. on grey. on ground.

I wonder which tomb they'll think suits me,
I wonder what song they'll all sing
As I'm coughed out of Orthodox Chimneys
With Beeswax cloying my wings?

I Hope My Darling's Phone's OK

I really miss that boy. I wish he loved me. There’s nothing I can do though, I’ve already sent him a message today. Maybe I can just call him and not say anything and hang up. But he’ll know it’s me, it comes up on the phone. Damn mobiles. It’s ok, I’ll just:
He picks up “Hello?”
I wait one and a half speech turns. I say “Hello?” I say “Hello?”
“Hi Nora? Hello?”
which I overlap with “Hello? Steven? Can you hear me?”
“Hello yes. Can you hear me?”
“Hello?” I say. I hang up and he looks at his phone as if it’s gone odd. His voice is beautiful.

Empire Burlesque

Writ drunk.

I’ve long admired at least some of the songs on Empire Burlesque in the same manner as I’ve admired anything else by Bob; “I’ll Remember You” and “Dark Eyes” have always struck me in particular. My trouble with the album as a whole was always the production; “Never Be the Same Again” was a major offender, having once driven me, while listening on headphones, into the very depths of The Fear, necessitating a two hour walk into The Field.

Time, and my switching of principal mind-altering substance to wine, have conspired to take the edge off my unwillingness to so much as countenance what my demons still call ‘80s production. Truth, though, as I see it, is that an awful lot of it’s awful shite, but that tends to be when coupled with poor musicianship and/or a lack of imagination, roots and, for want of a better word for there is no better word, soul.

Soul is the key word here; soul in the broad sense of the realness of intent and performance, and soul in the sense of the musical idiom that goes by that name. This is nothing wholly new to Dylan, his two albums with Jerry Wexler being cases in point, but it was Empire Burlesque where he immersed himself fully in secular soul waters, writing songs with the vocabulary of Smokey Robinson and Holland-Dozier-Holland. “Emotionally Yours”, covered memorably by The O’Jays is perhaps the best example of this, along with “I’ll Remember You”, but I urge you to listen to “Trust Yourself” and The Staple Singers’ “Respect Yourself” in the same sitting; the production on the former is perhaps not wholly sympathetic to the intended feel, but there can be no doubting the nod to the latter, albeit in a concoction that is one part empowerment to twenty-seven parts bitter cynicism.

There is on the album a bona fide stab at stadium rock in the form of “When the Night Comes Falling From the Sky” (a fine song a rendition of which with the E. Street Band I would more often than not prefer to hear), and a handful more fairly straight rockers (the best of which is “Seeing the Real You At Last”, a song that it didn’t take me too long to appreciate, and that I’ve dug fully since the Fleadh Festival of 2004), and then of course there’s the acoustic “Dark Eyes”. The overall feel, though, and not only in the overtly soul-inflected numbers, is of Soul Music, that finest of pop forms. A return to Muscle Shoals with Jerry Wexler and his people, and a shade or two of the glorious, dirty, dense, frantic sound of Street Legal (pop’s most underrated album if I’m the judge) might very well have improved Empire Burlesque; that said, it’s a solid album devoid of bad songs and with plenty of truly grand ones.

Further Notes writ immediately afterwards:

N.B. Revise to make reference to “Seeing the Real You At Last” [I did that]

Also the abhorrent album cover… It’s Ian McLagan’s shirt, but that doesn’t explain the jacket or the graphic design; God couldn’t explain the jacket or the graphic design.

Five minutes after completing this mini-essay, I feel compelled to refute the suggestion that Empire Burlesque was Bob’s first full immersion in soul, even secular soul – Street Legal surely trumps that – Changing of the Guards, Baby Stop Crying, True Love… I think the argument still carries water, but needs refining – clarification regarding song (specifically lyric) structure… E.Y. and I.R.Y less ‘wordy’, though still very much Bob… though even that’s spurious… I’m talking shite, frankly, though I stand by most of it – it’s a fine album, sure, but probably the main reason I wrote about Empire Burlesque rather than Street Legal is the complexity of my feelings regarding the latter, a truly great album the importance of which to myself I can’t currently express…

But listen to Empire… it’s tasty…

Please, fellow Bobcats, I know what I wanted to say here but tied myself up in knots – mercy! If you can fill in any gaps in my thoughts, don’t hesitate to do so – you may know my mind better than I do. In fact, I’m sure that you do.

Who KNOWS how to look at their own name objectively!?! (a boast)

Who knows how to look at their own name objectively!?!
Well I do. More than a couple of weeks ago Ian and I were in my bar quite drunk when somehow (I would have prompted it, you know what I’m like) Ian said “Emily Pear!” and I finally saw how ridiculous my surname really is and it sounded like the newest thing I had ever heard.

Jack said there's too much fiction on here and not enough..well....non-fiction

About a minute ago I was lying on my bed thinking about what to write down, with my face turned away from my cat, who had his front feet on my hip. I knew it was my cat there but suddenly he started to touch my right hand in a way that felt so much like a giant bumblebee that for a moment I was convinced and frightened like a nightmare.

Frank and Fish

Old Frank the fisherman was always brimming over with his tales of aquatic heroism. There was the time he wrestled an octopus that had hold of some damsel or another. Then there was the time he clobbered a hammer-head shark. Usually I’d just nod and smile, but there was one evening I felt a touch mischievous.

“Frank,” I said, “What I want to know is, have you ever been involved in a battle of any sort with a Great White?”

Frank looked startled, “Oh, Heavens!” he said, fingers twitching nervously at his pint, “Sure, I’d have more sense than that!”

“I see,” said I, “Well, I suppose it’s a different mettle of fish.”

Old Frank was crestfallen.

Dead Grass

Fitz was to gardening what a pathologist is to the healthcare professions. Susan was unquaveringly enthusiastic, though fickle as to the object of her attentions. She was young. It was late spring and the last of the healthy young birds were fledging. Some eggs lay cold, useless and abandoned. The flowers near the house were flourishing to varying degrees, but the lawn was dead. Susan’s family made the necessary calls, and Fitz duly arrived. His reputation, an estimable one, preceded him, and not undeservedly so.

There was little he could do, he said, given how late it was in the season, but he instructed them well for the next year. He looked at Susan, a little wistfully. She was pretty. He accepted payment graciously and headed home, his working day being over.

Susan is old now, and Fitz is dead.

Bitter words

Johan sighed. "Remember Spain?"

"Ah yes," replied Matilda from his lap "the beach".

"I was drowning and you didn't even know I was in the water".

"I was looking at the sun loungers".

A Paragraph

And I tried to hide the cracks in our marriage; spraying air freshener to cover the lazy smell of marijuana that lingered in the air of our living room. It was clear to us both that our love had none of the complacency of our eager first love. We had 3 years of marriage behind us and we both knew they had been too hard.

Thunder

Thunder rumbles gratefully
The deluge begins
A grey sky pours itself out
Hoping to be blue come morning.