Is it a loud man getting things wrong?

 Here, ol' Unattendees, to celebrate my love for you all, is a tree giving a little house a hug. Sorry I haven't been posting more, but I am once again between keyboards (in case you were wondering, this post has been compiled entirely from copying and pasting parts OF ITSELF) but this hardware situation should be resolved when I get back from France, pictured above – where I have, as always, been spending Christmas with my folks – and below is the advert that will pay for it:

 

 I might even have enough left over after to take a show to Edinburgh, something I haven't dared do since 2001. Guess which show. "I don't know, Simon. How many shows have you made?" Well exactly, that one. Although, thinking on the previous post, I am growing obsessed (again*) with how abysmal a part of real world, far right economic discourse beloved, old sci-fi tropes such as space exploration and Ai have become, so maybe it will be two shows! Maybe it will be none! No, I've written it down now (or pains-takingly pieced it together from individual characters torn from THIS VERY POST) and 2025 is likely to frighten a lot of us anyway, so nits like me, who are sitting pretty pretty, should give courage a go too! Happy... changing things, then. Yeah. No. Franceuck it. Happy 2025, readers. Happy Change. 

 

Vancouver last August, where this ad was filmed – along with many futuristic sci-fi shows from the noughties, meaning I'd wanted to visit this city for decades. But when I finally get there, everywhere else had caught up, and the biggest thing distinguishing this Pacific shoreline now from, say, Leeds or Chelsea Wharf is just the number of people to a canoe.

 

* Did you get that that was what "Time Spanner" was about? I mean, it was about other stuff too.

Platypus Vobiscum: a Pius Reader

Being further unsorted contributions to the Church of the Cosmic Platypus, salvaged over the course of two seasons working at "Phantom Peak" from Pius' easel in the corner of Old Town, together with illuminations – some by the author – also sundry anonymous annotations (click to embiggen)...

"Platypus Vobiscum. That's how you work the system. When it works, it works. Peace. Peace. Stop saying Peace. Take. For example take a moment. Did you mean Piece? Do you remember the psalm about the jigsaw? He puts pieces in the jigsaw. And he starts with the corners. The jigsaw is the pieces. Pushing can be pulled. Ink can run out. And then come back. Personally hopping about on the track, listening for rumbling. 

Back to the Circle. Start again. Start at the side."

"Well we start there. Stop saying Stop. Leave me be believe me. NOT EVERYTHING IS A CLUE! THERE you are, you naughty little bargain. I'm not saying the gloves are 'off' off, but nobody seems to be wearing gloves. 'I literally just got off my horse.' It is perfectly possible to exist in a state where you can INSTANTLY decide what being – say – this pen feels like. Or the candles. But I don't know you can do it with your eyes closed. Or you would do it differently. The whole concept of 'wrong', in a way, is – Oh I wanted to say 'wrong'. But."

 

"Is any dance a mandatory movement?

Vanity. Vanity. All is vanity. Apart from dressing as an Oompah Loompah.

Mockery is the sincerest form of flattery. No? But mockery just means imitiation.

In spite of its numerous legs and armour, the millipede is not the strongest animal in the pet shop. The strongest animal in the pet shop is the shopkeeper, for they feed the pets."

"The olden times had no eraser. So sometimes the angels would just look like bats. Imagine if angels hated their wings. What works is a piece of man." 

 

"Who was the first to sit down? When we were shrews, did one of us sit down and realise our hands were now free. But they had not the strength to use them. The more shoes I wear, the more I realise how little I understand about shoes. They go up and down with your feet.

But how?

I'm bang on time, and now does Time bang on me. Ribbons. Safer than candles. Three & four & never more."

"This is why old Mister Sleevey is very careful about where he sets up his knockoffables. And a good scribe always knows where the paper ends. 

I met a blogger from some retro land who said 'Two massive kneecaps – nobody knows whose – take up the landing, hairy lean and tanned. I think they might belong to Nerys Hughes, but now I can't remember how this poem originally scanned.' That's all they said. Then, falling on their face – as if to salvage some measure of grace, after such a dwindling finish – they uttered one last 'Thanks' in accents tinnish. But I would not be moved. I stood there still. I mean still like – oh, you know. And moved, as in Not here because they're there now.

All water is a feature. Even ice.

'a' came after 'the' because it changes the subject.

INFECTIOUS"

 

"Ordinarily this is not a forum for factional hoots. Changing one's mind can be be very useful. Two types  – at least – of crossing out (motives for deletion) A mistake or a change of heart."

 

"This is just to say that

I have sold the elephant

foot umbrella stand

Things fall on my back. And the trays are wet. And the shirts we wash are never as clean as the shirts we didn't buy.

Handwriting wasn't always calligraphy. Who wants to learn cursive when you can sprout the sentence separate and friendly. Not formal and exclusive. And when did exclusive become a compliment?"  

"I've drawn a little city. It's looking pretty pretty.

One can imagine the future, and spend all that time grieving.

SINGS: Elbows and kneecaps and drops of brown liquid. Nicknames that hurt like a stone or a stick would. Hairplugs that give you a tickle-y cough. These are some things that I hope will fall off. Hubcaps and breezeblocks and bits of old sofa. Pablo Neruda and Gordon the Gopher.

Happiness is a sense of control."

 

Stepping Into 2024 Like...

 As if! As if I'd ever "step into" a year. Years step into me, baby. Particularly last year, although I dimly remember resolving not to blog to see if anything else got written in its place, if that counts as a resolution. Results: I had a good day's writing in January, and then plans. Sitting on those plans I enjoyed a lot of days off. Too many. But I definitely enjoyed them, which I suspect is a skill. But now I'm poor. As anyone who follows me on instagram may know, I did finally land a job in the last two months of 2023, and I really enjoyed having that job, and then the job got busier, and I missed having days off, and I got iller and iller, and now I'm in France recuperating. That's a French boar. 

 

 I think she's a boar. My parents drove me up into the mountains to see a village sat in a crater – the Cirque de Navacelles – and she was knocking around a farm on the edge. We left the vineyards of Languedoc and wound up thick white canyons of pine – the temperature falling around us – until we reached a narrow-horizoned plateau of trees the size of bushes sheltering donkeys at the top, a sudden Mongolian steppe. Looking over the side of it was like looking at a map. Click to embiggen. 

 The sun was in our eyes all the way home. 

 It was a nice drive, and reminded me of a couple of things. One was just how much of the year I've spent playing "Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion", searching crags and plains for a cure for my own vampirism, forgetting which horse is mine, running away from anything really well, and maturely coming to terms with my own white privilege by opting to play as an orc. (Everyone in it really does look like Simon Cowell as well; congratulations, Micky D.) 

Simon Cowell has a quest for you pic.twitter.com/uq6C1PsuK0

— Micky D (@DeMickyD) July 11, 2023

 

 The second was THIS excellent adaptation of "Comet In Mooominland"starring our own John Finnemore which Radio 4 has just brought out for Yule, and which is definitely worth a share. I've missed sharing things on this blog. I used to stare at the cover of this for ages when I was ten. 

 Stepping into 2024 like...

 

                                                                                                                         source.                  

Staying In My Lane

 Those old explanations of ghosts – echoes of a trauma baked into place – is it only human trauma that has that power? Might parks be crawling with the ghosts of worms? Is this river haunted by fish, fish ghosts targeted by heron, more than a millenia-worth? I'm trying to get into the Hallowe'en spirit now that the weather is proper October.

 

 Unfinished business – that was another explanation. Do only humans get to have that then? Wait, is that all a soul is? Business? Is it? I haven't been busy this year. Maybe. Have I felt like a ghost? A bit. And it hasn't all been unenjoyable, but I watched a youtube essay last week about the films of the Beatles which reminded me that being A CREATIVE FORCE is, you know, an option, and initially may require nothing more than just thinking to yourself "I'm going to be A CREATIVE FORCE" and then seeing what happens, and it's really picked me up. (Here's that video essay.) 

 

 In this case a bit of what happened appears to be me going for a walk and then posting shit phone pictures of it here. Well, good. You'll have to take my word for it that there were joggers. It's odd to me, by the way, that that that's what it's called: "jogging". That's definitely what it looks like, but it's not the aspect you'd think they'd want to advertise. Jogging's normally something you want to avoid, in case you scratch the record or spill your drink. How can I make running forward feel more like running into something? Jog!

 

 Are these pavement demarcations a hangover from the pandemic, or permanent now? And has anyone studied their effect on a pedestrian's mental health? I think I hate them. They just seem like another thing to get on the wrong side of. It's nice to have somewhere to record that though. It's nice to be A CREATIVE FORCE. The next paragraph contains swearing.

 

 I also hate seeing so many people right now take the side of a side, rather than siding with people – to see so many call for an end to Netanyahu's response to the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holoocaust while not also calling - seeing as we're calling for things - for the safe return of Israeli hostages, as though we've finally run out of internet and there was just was no room for the Landaus. Well fuck that and fuck the war and fuck taking sides unless that side is Peace. Fuck Bibi. And fuck Hamas; buoyed by their actions, the Iranian Government announced last week it would be targeting Persian journalists working in Britain like my friend Faren. And, parenthetically (do go on, Simon) coming up to a year after the murder of Mahsa Ahmini by Iranian police for having loose hair I decided to search Xitter for any more news of protests, and found myself enaged in the following fun coversation about... let me check... yes, apartheid. Stick with it.

 

 

 

 I know, "mroe"...

 By the way, you can now find me on blue sky at @slepkane.bsky.social. 

 I really hope you're all okay.

Maybe It's Just The January Talking

"NO! THIS IS ENOUGH! I DON'T WANT ANY MORE OF THIS, NO! NO! STOP!"

  

 Good. I look less surprising at the age of forty-eight than Little Nemo here, but that's still no excuse for not getting on with things – not that I haven't been entirely okay with not getting on with things this past year, and not that I'm not entirely supportive of the absence of resolutions for the coming year. But while 2022 saw me comfortably protected from most of the year's crises by jobs and a nice big bedroom, I've no guarantee 2023 will do the same, so some kind of "project" might be an idea, as fortune at least favours a moving target.

 

 The Med, from which I'm now back.

 

 That project probably won't be this blog though. It's not just the holiday that's caused my contributions to thin. I thought about doing a big New Year's Dump of my favourite unposted photographs from 2022, but could never get beyond trying to caption the photo from January below, simply because I couldn't think of anything to say about it.

 

 It's only now that I realise that's probably exactly what I had to say about it: that this photo represented a cycle of me going outside, into Kensington, and coming back with absolutely nothing to say, and realisations like that are what this blog is great for – coming up with ideas as I'm writing. But putting the time into a post which an idea might deserve is ungaugeable when you've decided to turn out one a day. And it's the not coming up with ideas that takes up so much, well, everything. 

 

 Also, I've finally worked out how to download Word onto this old laptop. So if I like something now I'll just share it on twitter (as long as that's around,) and if I have some pictures I have nothing to add to I'll share them on instagram (oh, if my new, even worse phone's memory lets me, I've just remembered.)  Otherwise I'll take notes a bit more privately in 2023, and try to find some other blank pages to stare at. And maybe this is just the January talking. But it's January's turn. Let's hear it out.

 

THE GOOMB

 In my first night's sleep after being hospitalised for smoke inhalation in 2009, I had three very vivid dreams. I recorded the details of them as best as I could when I woke up, with illustrations, and here's one of them:

 

 "The freighter that picks me up from the Ice flow is manned by tall silver men with long waterproofs, square heads but aquiline profiles, smooth black dishes for ears and receding chrome spirals on the head. Maybe the cube swivels to accomodate the face. Anyway a nice kind image. THE GOOMB-MEN"

 

 I don't know where I got the name "Goomb" from, but they stayed with me. I tried to put them in a Mitchell And Webb sketch later that year (it was never filmed, maybe I submitted it too late), and I was still contemplating casting them as saviours in some children's book or other until today, when I was knocked sideways to see this image pop up on pinterest: 

 

 

 This is a two-headed Martian from the Twilight Zone story "Mr. Dingle the Strong", an episode I have no recollection of ever seeing. Their heads aren't exactly cubes, and their ears aren't exactly dishes, and their antennae aren't exactly spirals, but that's the Goomb alright, right down to their cheekbones. The clincher for me is that, while I describe them as "silver" in the notebook, I actually dreamt them in black and white.

 Emailing that sketch to Gareth Edwards back in December 2009, I wrote: 

"Hopefully you might find some joy – far too late as it is – in this sketch about aliens I mentioned ages ago, and then didn't write because it seemed you had loads about aliens, and now have written simply because it might turn out to be the very-odd-but-actually-useable sketch I have so far failed to produce." 

 And now UPDATE (April 27th 2023) It looks like it might actually be used now! All hail the Goomb...

 

Sure, I'm still on twitter.

 When I first returned to this blog* after Boris Johnson's 2019 election victory I thought I'd just remain on twitter to post links and provide a little daily – but potentially always topical – keening over our exit from the EU inspired by Megan Anram's daily "Today was the day Donald trump finally became president" posts. Initially, I thought spending less time on everyone's favourite hellsite was simply for my own good, but when I watched Lindsay Ellis' video about her own cancelling last April I realised maybe the problem wasn't just me, but twitter's own business model, which now required the active promotion of upsetting content in order to keep our attention. Capitalism depended on growth, and twitter had grown as big as it was going to get. So I pinned this to my profile:

 

 Yes, stay cool. Because Fascism Thrives On Division. 

 Then, just over a week ago, Elon Musk finally bought the site or app or whatever it is for forty-four billion dollars.

 

 

 And immediately sacked its content moderators – one week before the American midterm elections, and exactly one day before a terrorist attack on a migrant processing centre in Dover followed by our reappointed Home Secetary's warning of an "invasion" of the south coast by refugees – and I was initially nonplussed by commentators passing the popcorn and using phrases like "it's going to be a wild ride." I mean, I get it. I write, and sentences must be finished, and lot of this blog is just me sharing stuff I find ineresting and then realising I should probably provide some kind of commentary, and "it's going to be a wild ride" is a handy sign off. But it still seemed a weird way to describe the rise of Fascism.  

 

 My sister's a meme!

 

 But maybe that wasn't what was being described. Maybe those commentators anticipating twitter's downfall were looking forward to the fall of the rise of Fascism, certainly something I'd like to live long enough to see... That's maybe not entirely true. What I mean is, given that I have to keep on living, I would very much like the fall of the rise of Fascism to happen at some point during that. 

 Has the word Fascism gone a bit weird on me now? Maybe.

 Anyway, here's some chat.
 

 And I was talking to my uncle Gordie last week, and learning how well his children's generation have been rallying around each other, and how much help is now provided – ar at least seen to be needed – which wasn't when I was their age, and I have to remember that I'm living to see other, far better things also on the rise. 

 

 

* Here's how this post originally began: 

 

 When I first started

 Okay actually, before I continue I'm going to let you a little into how tediously I go about writing these posts: I've just started writing this, about four minutes ago, three of which have been spent arriving at the word "tediously" which I might still change, and it would normally now be about an hour before I looked back over all this and finally noticed how... again, I'm going to spend a while now trying to find a synonym for "bad"... let's just stick with "bad" then... how bad those opening four words are, only as it happens this time I noticed almost immediately. "When I first started"? Surely that's a... I'll look this up... tautology? Doesn't starting mean doing something for the first time anyway? And yet it sounds okay to my ear when I say it out loud. Maybe I just like the sound of my voice too much. "When I first started..."

 Okay.

 When I first started returning to this blog to post daily

 Oh bloody hell....

 "First started returning"? That sounds terrible. What can that mean? But no, back in December of 2019 I returned to the blog after a bit of an absence and I started posting daily, which I hadn't done before, and then there was a break in early 2021, and now I'm blogging daily again. Hence "first", hence "returning"... Yeah that"started" is redundant.

 When I first returned to this blog to post daily... I've honestly forgotten now what I was going to say.

Breaking

  No wonder that podium's always doing a double take. 

 I reached the end of yesterday wondering how I'd managed to get so little done given how little I currently have to do, and only realised with Liz Truss' resignation today how much time I've spent simply checking who's in charge.

 

 

 To be fair to the Daily Mail, she lasted longer than an hour. She also lasted longer than Andrew Neil when he tried to launch a similarly naked culture war over on that GB News then left after two weeks. And how long will the Tories last? Sorry, I mean the Conservatives! I'm trying to stop using the T word, as I have a theory the way they've managed to stay in office for so long is by having two names: the "Tories", who soak up the bad news and the hate, and the "Conservatives" who actually appear on the ballot paper, name unsullied. We'll see if this works again. I've no idea when. Anyway hats off to the Daily Star's "Will Liz Truss last longer than this lettuce" live feed, a properly salient piece of journalism – Yes I know we all know about it, but this is an archive too. To whoever's reading this in years to come: Shush, I know political chaos is never a prelude to good news, but let me enjoy this. Right, the rain's just stopped, laptop closing, I'm off for a walk. 

Lucy McCormick Draws a Spider Diagram

  So. In other business this week, I'm lucky enough to have been invited by old London Dungeon cohort Lucy McCormick to come on board with the excellent Hannah Maxwell (also pictured) as "actual actors" (Lucy calls us this despite being on a break from playing Cathy in an international tour of "Wuthering Heights" – THAT Lucy McCormick) to help her with a few days' research & development on an as yet unwritten play she was commissioned to have a think about by the Soho Theatre. Lucy's a hero of mine – I want people I know to see her, and I want people I don't know to know I know her – but this is the first time I've ever collaborated with her theatrically, and the couple of days' fun we've thus far had has reminded me of working with Shunt in two quite specific ways.

 

 

 Firstly, most of the exercises Lucy asks us to do turn up something sustainably entertaining which might be the basis of a whole show by itself. And secondly, none of these exercises seem to have anything to do with each other – despite there being nowhere else I'd rather be, I've no idea what's going on. No, that's not true; while I was dragging myself along the floor yesterday singing harmonies on a Billie Eilish number before tearing into the salad Lucy had gaffer-taped to her legs, I knew exactly what was going on: That. What I mean is, I've no idea what Lucy wants to make. But that's fine, because Lucy does and she says this is exactly what she's needed, so that's great. (That spider diagram was my idea by the way. Its centre was never filled.)

 

Also, THIS Lucy McCormick

"I hear you let your forefather out of the cupboard!"

 Duck call as used in John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme!

 

 ANNOUNCEMENT: Series Nine of JFSP is getting a second airing, on Radio 4 tonight at 11pm, and every night thereafter until New Year's Eve, and producer Ed Morrish is planning a tweet-along tonight to accompany Episode One – the one starring Lawry Lewin. I might be asleep because I'm an hour ahead. Carrie might also be asleep, as they've started allowing her to drive ambulances, and Lawry's not even on twitter, but I'll see if I can get that fake account pretending to be him to join us instead.

 

 Of course, you can still hear any you episode you want, any time you like, on Sounds, and I say "of course" because I'm still rashly assuming that everyone reading this blog will have already heard it anyway. If you haven't, however, I've written a little about how much I love it, and why you shouldn't necessarily be expecting a sketch show, here. 

 In keeping with the theme of Series Nine, here's a Moomin being startled by his ancestors:

 I loved hearing John play Moomintroll on the radio yesterday by the way, and really recommend you listen to the production of "Moominland Midwinter" in which he did it. It's possibly my favourite adaptation yet of possibly my favourite books; I'm still trying to work out what my love of Tove Jansson says about me. The increasing marketability of her characters isn't helping, but I think what she taught me, uniquely among the childrens' authors I read, was that a story can be packed with fantasy and drama without any need for "adventure". This probably wasn't a particularly useful lesson to learn as a writer, but there's no unlearning it. 

 Here's another Moomin winter to enjoy.

The Terrible Trivium Interviewed

 

"I would describe myself as nicely dressed, and pretty evil."

 

 I'm not sure I've ever written anything that wasn't a little like The Phantom Tollbooth (when I wasn't moving sand from one side to the other with tweezers). But, in the best way, The Phantom Tollbooth was a little like a lot of things worth copying, so maybe I copied its copying too. Milo was a child's Danté, lost in the forest of his life at the prodigious age of ten. Like Wonderland, the world he found on the other side of the Tollbooth was packed with unapologetically academic silliness, and momentous thought experiments. And like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz – and I suppose Everyman from Everyman ("Everymun"?) – his way through that world was a handy quest. This Christmas just gone, my sister gave me a beautiful annotated edition of it.

 

 So thanks, Norton Juster, for writing The Phantom Tollbooth, and for teaching me the names of some of the demons, and I'm sorry you're gone. 

The Joke Not Gotten

 

The poet Robert Frost on his eighth brirthday. (Source.)

 

 I can't believe I was up until 4 in the morning, rhyming. I've enjoyed writing up my walks, but less so last night. It turns out, trying to pastiche Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken", just because there's something or other you might have wanted to say about a specific set of crossroads, is not the best way of working out what that something actually is, and I realised today one of the problems might have been that, while I know the poem, I wasn't entirely sure what it was about, and so I didn't know what I was I playing off. I did a little research then, and was relieved to discover I wasn't alone: According to this article, Frost in fact had written one of the most quoted poems in the English language as a mock-heroic joke for his friend Edward Thomas, but it had fallen completely flat, prompting Thomas to finally write back “I doubt if you can get anybody to see the fun of the thing without showing them & advising them which kind of laugh they are to turn on.” The misunderstanding would rankle Frost for the rest of his life.

 This made me feel a lot better. And if you're reading this, the late Robert Frost, then hey, I know just how you feel, I've been where you are. I was there last night, mate. I cut a whole stanza out just before publishing it. Do you want to read– I'll get it–

 

    But then why the divergence? To walk through a wood?

    It wasn't a wood, it was five metres wide.

    You could hardly get lost, and so what was the good?

    I supposed, if you're feeling adventurous, you could

    At least have the trees either side.

 

 So, this was going to come after the first verse, then I realised it was basically filler – Is it a joke? Who knows, right? – I mean, my whole poem's basically filler, but I put the hours in, and it rhymes. So have this one on me, Bob. I feel so much closer to you right now.

This was Regent's Canal on Tuesday afternoon at 4pm

 Two roads diverged by London Zoo,

 Along the canal and the undergrowth

 Where I found out in Summer that raspberries grew.

 One up to the main road, so far as I knew.

 Or either one took you the same way as both.

 

 I headed uphill, for two metres or so,

 But the path didn't lead to the road. It just ran

 Parallel to the towpath two metres below,

 With a slightly more foresty vibe to it though,

 Of which, I admit, I'm a fan.

 The paving was cracked and the brambles were cute

 And the branches were dense, and it rose and it sank

 But the road was quite long, and if this did not suit,

 The smoother and wider, more sociable route

 Was still six feet away on the bank.

 

 "Desire paths" – or at least absence of grass –

 Had therefore been worn out at breaks in the fence,

 Perhaps by those finding the towpath too sparse,

 Perhaps to protest the conceptual farce

 Of crossroads that make no difference.

HAIKU composed remembering the greatest disappointment encountered making comics as a child

 

Biro ink brightens.

But felt tip ink turns paler.

Why's that then, Tipp-Ex?

The Last Time I Thought About Sharing Space in a Comedy

 It was this time last year. I was talking to Gemma Brockis about Home, whose second series had just aired, and we were basically firing off superlatives at each other. We both knew Rufus Jones, who created the show and plays the "lukewarm xenophobe" Peter, whose family attempt to accomodate a Syrian refugee, Sami, played by the excellent Youssef Kerkour as as unmoveable, vulnerable and intimately honest as a handprint. That's Peter above, in his new car, which he has to share with strangers on account of his new job, as an Uber driver. His previous job had disappeared in anticipation of Brexit, for which, naturally, Peter voted. Everything Rufus took on in choosing to write this requires the guts of a fire-breathing goat – as he says, "writing never feels easy, so you may as well write about something that matters" – but nowhere are those guts more gloriously on display than when Peter receives news of this redundancy, but I don't want to spoil it. Home is here. If you haven't seen it, absolutely do. Rufus is amazing, everyone in it is amazing, Carrie Quinlan's in it too, and it is directed with unwavering subtlety by one of the funniest clowns I've ever seen, Peepolykus' David Sant.