Mellow Fruitfulness!!

Twas just the other day, as I recall, whilst slumbering like a Babe enjoying the Sleep of the Just, cocooned within the cosiness of the Stoned Holy Counterpane, that I found myself, in  a most Rude & Untimely manner, being ripped from such Golden Slumbers as an Embittered & Bibulous, Middle-Aged Pop-Slop-Failure can be allowed to enjoy, by the irksome twittering of the alarm clock! If this is a world where One Direction (or Yin Erection as I like to know 'em!) are rakin' it in and runnin their Manufactured & Manicured Hands over the lissome forms of any number of Delightfully Gamine Popettes and yet one where I struggle to pay the phone bill and buy Sachets of Fast Action Yeast, you'll hopefully understand that a Gid Night's Kip is sometimes hard to come by!! Luckily, my Unwavering Belief (or should that be Monomaniacal Delusion?!?!)  that I shall be vindicated in my choice of career path, recognised for the lyrical genius that I am and finally rewarded with Pneumatically Endowed Ladies wantonly proffering their Prodiguous Endowments up to my Delight & Tumescent Satisfaction , ensures that Sleep Shuts Up Sorrow's Eye & Felicits Me Awhile From Mine Own Company!!....

But I digress....And so it was, that after a good scratch of the Stoned Holy Nut-Sac and thereafter savouring the Silky & Satisfying Feel & Taste of the Parritch which I had lovingly stirred with my trusty Spurtle, that I, your very own SToNEdholYbLOGGer, issued forth into the Unsullied Hours of the Morning ; Ready, if not quite willing, to drop to my knees and take yet another shafting from those Hard Task Masters - The Fates!..& all this, Gentle Readers, to garner a few kopeks to spend on Necessities & Garbage alike... Whatever idlesome thoughts as were ambling their Devil-May-Care way through the blancmange-like folds of the Stoned Holy Brain Packet, were quickly shooed away when I noticed that the Pastures & Paddocks which girdle Stoned Holy HQ were frosted in silver and the Sweet Recalled Aromas of Approaching Winter had circulated up the Stoned Holy Hooter!!

Ah, Autumn : Season of Mists & Mellow Fruitfulness. Close Bosom Friend of the Maturing Sun. Conspiring with him how to Load & Bless with Fruit the Vines that Round the Thatch-Eaves Run! Ah, poor John Keats : Coughing up blood & thrashing in his T.B Sheets by the Spanish Steps.....and  now it seems, as I have read in the pages of the local periodical, not the Skulking, Emaciated, Doom-Laden Youth we'd previously been given to believe, but an Opium Addict "Drows'd with the Fumes of Poppies"!  Does it matter if  "Ode on Indolence" was written whilst the Peely-Wally Poet was off his face on Laudanum and scribbling feverishly? In the sense of it somehow diminishing his Artistry, the answer must be an emphatic NO! However, if it helps us imagine Keats as a fleshly creature of Needs n Wants n Weaknesses n Contradictions, YES!....... I for one would like to think Keats drew some pleasures from this world before leaving it.  Is it an idle fancy of myself alone  that the 'Bright Star', Fanny Brawne,  got a good bloody seein-to before Keats' oh too perfect Peggin-Out in Rome!?!? (I may expand this notion into an Erotic Vignette for Modern Interpretive Dance entitled 'Keats & Teats'!!....watch this space!)

But how can the days have been, Scrapin'-for-Ha'pennies, for a Stoned Holy Rollin' John Keats and his Melting Flesh?!  If No Man Chooses the Bed he's Born In, it must be noted also that the Age whereupon his life is played out against is not to his choosing either -  Thus it was that Poor John got a time when Britain was distancing itself from the Bawdiness & Licentiousness of the 18th Century. A time when the Educated Classes were obsessively diferentiating themselves from The Riff-Raff & The Mob & the The Great Unwashed. I ask you, Good Readers, how was a Penniless Poet ever gonna get to 'dance beneath the Diamond Skies with one hand waving free' in a Codified and Mannered Society dominated by notions of Propriety & Respectability? Is it any wonder then that as Britain moved towards the stultifying repression and joyless Puritanism of the Victorian Era that Keats had recourse to reach for the Tincture of Opium!? Who amongst us would begrudge the Poet a few hours of escape, if not escapism, into Laudanum fuelled reveries?.....or, perchance as he himself put it, "For Poesy, No, She has not a Joy, at Least for Me, so Sweet as Drowsy Noons & Evenings Steeped in Honied Indolence ; O, for an Age so Shelter'd from Annoy that I may Never Know how Change the Moons or Hear the Voice of Busy Common Sense!"

....but this is 2012 and Laudanum is unavailable over the counter at yir local dispensary....Bargain Booze however, next door, is open for business and happy to supply 'Broken Britain' with cheap, mind-numbing concoctions to dull the senses and nullify the pain...if yiv no' awready blown yir Giro doon at the Bookies, that is!!! Far better methinks to look at the Autumn Skies above the Housing Estate with its boarded up windows and its row of grafitti splattered fast-food outlets and think of Lost John "While Barred Clouds Bloom the Soft, Dying Day & Touch the Stubble Plains with Rosy Hue"!!

                             

ROCK ON, BEAUTIFUL JOHN!!

Godspeed you Wearisome Wayfarers!

Just made good my return from a brief visit to the Smokey Big Black where the StonedHolyRollers performed their heinous & blasphemous musical outpourings before tens of thousands..... or, to explain more fully, we rocked the pavements of Notting Hill as part of  our ongoing Street Outreach Programme! Enough generous people with impeccable taste dropped enough in the hat to finance a trip to the Land of the Late Night Haircut (aka: Stoke Newington!) for the finest Turkish Culinary Delights our meagre coppers could buy. Having just mentioned tens of thousands of yir Human Peoples, we must remember, my dear cyperperusers, that that figure is a small number within the context of the thronging multitudes of London.

London IS big, after all....and stuffed fulla peoples. Big Ones - Little Ones; Skinny Ones...& ones who give the bathroom scales just a little more trouble! All sorts of folks of varying shades from peely-wally Hombres, like yir StOnEdHOlybLogGer here to the blackest of shiny black folks, whose veins must course with the undiluted blood of Ham!

And all of these people, it seems, are on the move. Paddin' the Hoof North to South. Takin' Shanks' Pony East to West. Perhaps Time lapse photography shows us best the Disorganized Buzzing of Human Drones Hithering & Thithering; the Turbid Seething of Human Waters; the Chaotic Crash of Ambulatory Humanity.
In our haste to get where it is we're going to, the cold lens of the camera sees us not as individuals but a Formless & Shapeless, Unthinking & Blundering mass!

Cut to Tottenham Court Road Tube Station at 5pm and the Riotous Rampage of Rail-Users is in full swing. A Senseless Concretion of Commuters en route from Points A to B. Here you exist for a split second before morphing back into the anonymity of the Hurrying Hordes. An endless gallery of faces flits before your eyes which instinctively follow the constant stream & strain the retina. Bits of bodies desired & hungered for in an instant are quickly forgotten as another surge of visual stimuli is discharged from off the next Northern Line train bound for High Barnet. Wave after wave they flit by as the brain struggles to make sense of the experiential overload of Colour, Shape & Form.

In the confined space of the underground carriage we entertain ourselves, unknowingly almost, with the ceaseless floodtide of human faces; detached & seperated from their unimaginable lives for the seconds they take up in our own. Down here we are all voyeurs. Seemingly bored & uninterested eyes dance from place to place furtively. We steal a glance but quickly look away if our eyes collide with someone else's. We observe but exist also as observed as a thousand sightlines criss-cross one another in an intricate optical lattice. We are cardboard cut-outs against a flat, dull backdrop to be stared at, regarded, scrutinized. We sit in suspended animation waiting for our stop to arrive so that we can once more spring into some kinda life movement.

We spill out onto Archway and busy ourselves with the To-ings & the Fro-ings, the Comings & the Goings on the Avenues we've drifted onto in life.....& there are so many ways to get there : Motorways, Roadways, Byways, Highways, Pathways, Headways, This Ways, That A-Ways, By-the Ways, Sea Ways, Sky Ways, Cycleways, Throughways, Giveways, Gettaways, My Ways, Your Ways..........Bon Voyage & Godspeed, you Wearisome Wayfarers!

Dwarf Sized Sin City - London's Own Miniature World of Vice!!

In his classic cautionary tale from 1961, the Immortal Jimmy Reed warned us clealy, in his own inimitably lazy n laconic manner, that the 'BRIGHT LIGHTS' & the 'BIG CITY'  Would Go To Your Baby's Head!....but here I am, loping like a chimpanzee up on two legs round Soho, London's own MiniatureWorld of Vice!!!

Adrift in Soho by day, Costermongers shout the price of apples from behind their barrows in Berwick Street and office drones scurry to order over-sized cups of coffee during lunch breaks. The huge fireglow of the Sun swamps the Puny Neon Doodles and renders their message ineffective.....but sooner or later the Sun disappears from view and it's Diminutive Celestial Sibling, The Moon, takes over the task of throwing light upon one half of the World. And it's when night falls the Dwarf-Sized-Sin-City comes fully to life and starts to Glow!

To All Night Drug Prowlin' Wolves, like yir very own SToNEdholYBLoggeR, creepin along the Kerbsides n Alleyways lookin for some Midnight To Six, Man kinda Stimulation, the Moon has been made redundant by a Vast, Obedient Army of yellow street lights but for most of the Human Being Species it's still all they've got between them and impenetrable darkness, so it's just as well the Moon still insists on clockin' on for its night shift!   There was a time, long ago, that when darkness came, our ancestors would huddle close to one another and wait for the light to return. Strange Days Indeed! Half formed & naked, not knowing truly if the Sun would be back, staring into the unknowable immensity of Space and (if their Proto-Lingual skills had developed sufficiently to allow them to do so!!) wondering, open mouthed, at a million Studs of Fire twinkling above their frail little Simian skulls with their foreheads criminally low & their prognathic jawlines jutting out most ungracefully...& there, all the while, the mystery of mysteries, crawling across the Dark Mansion of the Sky; a Big, Silent, Silver Orb!....And then it came to pass that fire was bridled!... and in an evolutionary blink of an eye it wasn't long at all before there were light bulbs & the multidazzle of Soho was shining out and selling sexual gratification!! So to the shuffling human shapes of Soho the Moon goes unnoticed; its pallid, ethereal light lost in the importuning glare of Neon. Even if you were to throw your gaze heavenwards, your eyes would, as Evolution has taught them to do,  ignore the Moon's flimsy, ashen light and settle instead upon the Gaudy & Urgent Buzz of Coloured Neon!

Unlike Fireworks which bomb their Shimmering Splendour in an instant, Neon will glow for as long as you pass an electrical charge through it. Unlike Fireworks and their Ephemeral Moment of Brilliance, Neon shines on....So Neon has been Captured; Neon has been Tamed; Neon has been set to work! It can be bottled and moulded into phosphorescent symbols which burn through human retinas to send you a promise of satisfaction! In the crowded Scintilla of Soho we are in a place where the neon lights assure us SEX can be viewed; SEX can be spied upon; SEX can be consumed, SEX can be perused, SEX can be bought.....

It is also, in the words of the All-Time-Master-of-Honky-Tonk, Ray Price, a place where lights can say "forget her name in a glass of sherry wine" or where lights can "offer other girls to empty hearts like mine." Verily it remains thus, Brother Ray! "The Cabarets & Honky Tonks, their flashing signs invite a broken heart to lose itself in the glow of city lights!! They paint a purty picture of a world that's gay & bright....but it's just a mask for loneliness behind those city lights!!!"

Time, methinks, to leave these illuminated postcodes behind me!!
Ahm Outta Here-Vroom Vroom!!!....

here's the link to Ray in all his honky tonk Glory! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr79fOfP0dY

and another one for Jimmy Reed sounding half-cut as usual!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giGGK3Fk9co

Squat City Idler - Squat City Idyll

Up on the roofs off Londonville, right this goddam Holy Beat Second, there's one helloffalotta people just like me, soakin' up the Sun in all its generosity, nonchalantly flickin' flies away with the sweep of a quickly browning arm & listening subconsciously to leafy London undulating in the softest of blowin' breezes as a city-bound forest of London Planes put in by Londoners past gently get on with the job at hand ; hoovering up particulates outta the muggy Capital's air space; greening up the dreary, brown brick streets and, of course, just as they're doin' now, quietly susurrating & providing a subconscious connection to nature in all its goodliness amongst this man-made, dehumanising mincer that chews people up n spits 'em out bent & twisted!!

 God knows what kinda fucked-up mess would stain these Boulevards if it wasn't for these trees, standing in their own unobtrusive, dignified way, softening the jagged edges of this Concrete-Mash-Up!! For people get mangled here in the litter strewn Streets & Avenues that reek of fried chicken. Here, amongst the Crescents & Terraces, damage is wreaked on Tender Hearts & Uncomprehending Minds! Maybe the countless rows of disshevelled Victorian Villas in Hackney (where the plaster has peeled long since from once resplendent neo-classical porticoes and where the gardens are now filled with black rubbish bags, empty cola cans & dandelions) are a microcosm of what happens on a citywide scale where the slow erosion of neglect comes to play also on human beings and eats away at notions like Respect & Dignity, Kindness & Sociability. And so what happens if you haven't got whispering leaves to stir atavistic memories and soothe the woebegone soul?  In Londonville, remember, there is a Whole-Big-Heavy-Heap of  Bricks & Mortar and Steel & Glass sitting on top of what once was Mother Nature's  Rich, Brown Valley Earth! London is a Big, Dirty Squatter!!

Someday yet to wheel about this whole goddam Man-Made-Muddle is gonna be REDUNDANT and everything is gonna be beaten back & weathered down & swallowed up! Until then things have a habit of staying just where they are until someone or something comes along n picks 'em up n shunts them along to Postcodes new! It was in this way that London used to be in other places : The Houses of Parliament, St. Paul's, Buckingham Palace - all use Portland Stone from Dorset; The Tower of London uses stones from Kent & France; Tower Bridge uses granite from Cornwall. It occurs to me now that all of these stones just mentioned were formed when the land masses they were part of were sliding across parts of the Globe other than the locations they are at present. Indeed, the London Clay that the City itself rests upon was formed by marine & land deposits in shallow sub-tropical seas...so all that stuff that got washed out and deposited must have came from somewhere else before ending up in thick layers waiting to be turned into bricks to be carried in hods by burly Victorian labourers before then being turned into places like Kentish Town & Kensal Green, Hammersmith & Highgate.....& just think on the incalculable amount of Welsh slate currently insitu atop all those houses in London's vast Granny-Knot of Roads & Streets!

It's fitting then to think that most Londoners themselves started out as being from somewhere else. Strange to consider that the Pre-Fab Escarpments of the High-Rise and the Smoky & Sooty Rookeries of Slum Tenements delivered up some kinda scant sanctuary for the rootless & homeless from Blighted & Benighted, faraway corners of our World ; yet they did! And so here we all are huddled round the banks of the river as it wends it's time-worn passage to the sea; imagining as we go about our scrawny human business that the walls that hem us in are somehow permanent. And yet, even this London is on the move!!

10 Million people, 20 Million feet, 200 Million Toes; Swarming,  Flocking, Plodding, Tramping the hard, faceless streets imperceptibly moving little bits of London detritus from here to there....or maybeez it is the wind huffs n puffs down these hollow canyons scudding things along.....or maybe it's the rains that fall & wash something along to somewheres else....& so it goes....and by the time the Sun's had enough and decides to call it quits for the day & clock off, London isn't really the same as it was when it started out that morning......but no one notices because there's food to be gotten, eaten, deposited; drink to be drunk; sex to be searched for; laughter to be enjoyed; tears to be cried; desperate screams to be howled; old lives to fizzle out n new ones to be pushed into being.......

And so the big Meaningless, Pointless, Goal-less, Destination-less wheel of life grinds on taking every one of us living creations round with it until the day arrives when the space we fill up is gonna fall apart & all the atoms that constitute what we are are gonna  say 'So Long, It's Been Good To Know Ya' to one another and go lookin' for new forms to become part of.......Sometimes it is that that thought chills ya to the very core of your being but right now, up on my Squat City roof glorying in the Sun and listening to the gentle rustle of the feathery foliage and faraway hum of planes high above me....it's....kinda....errrrr.....BEAUTIFUL!!! 

PEACE, LOVE N COSMIC FELICITATIONS MY FELLOW BLOGGERS!!!!

THIS IS YIR SQUAT CITY IDLER IN HIS SQUAT CITY IDYLL SIGNING OFF........     

SWEEP IT AWAY!!

Oft times, as he plods the hard, concrete pavements of this world, the S T o n e D H o L y r O L L e R   will pass an idle moment wondering why it is he feels the need to refer to himself in the 3rd Person!! At other times, when the
S t o n e d H o l y B r a i n B o x  is unconcerned with things Grammatical, the more sharp-eared pedestrian may hear the phrase "O, the Times - O, the Manners"  emanating from the S t o n e d H o l y M o u t h H o l e ! Such is the lot of the 3-Eyed Man adrift in times he was not fashioned for!!

* * * * * * * * * *

Just today, as I sat spooning the last of my cappucino foam into my gobhole & admiring the fetlocks of the waitress, I happened to pick up a newspaper - This Was A Mistake!! It was also dangerous, for I had left the cosseted Sanctuary of S t o n e d H o l y   H Q  without drawing up contingency plans regarding what to do in the event of finding one's  S t o n e d H o l y S e l f n e s s  profoundly overwhelmed with the feeling of being trapped in a Great Big Barrel of the Brown Stuff without the means to extricate oneself from it! Usually, when events overtake me and Intimations of Impotency creep up on me, I  pop a disc into the old c.d player and listen to Hank Williams singing "I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive" and receive life-affirming succour from the sound of Hank's voice & the ethereal stylings of Don Helms on the E6 neck of his pedal steel. This option though, was not available to me, due in no small part to my being an avowed technophobe and not having a smart phone and a pair of ear plugs at the ready. Bravely, I sallied forth into the uncharted waters of Page Two and read on!......

* * * * * * * * * *

It wasn't after more than a few seconds that my heckles were up, my pulsebeat had rocketted up to 140b.p.m and the S t o n e d H o l y B l o o d  was at boiling point! For it seems, Cyberfriends, that the Lunatics are well & truly in charge of the local Sanitorium!! And here's a snippet or two for why : First off was the news that President Obama has upped the budget for his 'drone war' on Pakistan. He must think it's paying dividends!. If incinerating mosques & bakeries and killing up to 3,000 civilians, including nearly 200 children means the strategy is working out fine for him & the Murderous Military Machine whose interests he serves then so be it n here's to his 2nd Term in Office.....of course, where it really sickens yi tae the pit o yir gut is when you remember that Mr. Obama has been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize!!! Hey Ho, Gentle Reader, Hey Ho.....

* * * * * * * * * *

Next to catch my attention was Mr. Michael Gove ; who you may know as our present Secretary of State for Education but I know as an Uneducated Fool from an Educated School......as well as a Chinless,  Brainless & Odious Little Tory Runt!! It seems he was up before the Levenson Enquiry lecturing them on the importance of press freedom and delivering a speech full of praise for his one time boss at 'The Times', upright citizen' and all round Good-Fella Rupert Murdoch!! A great man' according to the chinless wonder!
This is the same incompetent who thought putting a copy of the King James Bible in every school in England & Wales would sort out a lot of the problems facing our beleaguered education system!! Talk about Finger-on-the-Pulse!! Just a teensy-weensy bit out of touch, what,what??.....Meanwhiles he's thinking of taking a victory for the Tories in the next General Election to be a mandate to run state schools for profit!?!?.......of course, up here in Scotland we've got our own Education System (funnily enough, it's the one that 'educated Mr. Gove!!) but I do hope that in the event of the Tories being returned for a second term in office, we will have severed our ties with Her Majesty's Sinking Ship Westminster!! I HAVE A DREAM!!.... 
  

I   N   D   E   P   E  N   D   E   N   C   E   !   !   !

* * * * * * * * * * *

Whilst we're on the subject of abandoning the Good Ship Britannia we have to mention the Jubilee. The acid burn of bile at the back of the S t o n e d H o l y C r a w  is, at this point, Burnin' Something Awful but for you, good Republican Citizens, I soldier on! You will remember that all this feverish hammering of the keys was elicited by my having inadvertently opened a newspaper; well, it was when the little section detailing the cost of the monarchy fell out onto the table that I had to abandon any attempt at Urbane, Metropolitan Cafe Culture and Run to the City of Refuge that is
S t o n e d H o l y H Q, where I can fulminate as is my wont & pepper my Expostulations with as many expletives as I see fit without fear of being forcibly restrained & shipped off to the Funny Farm and a course of E.C.T!! I'll not bore you here with the full financial break down & pie charts itemising the cost of flying a wee auld woman all over the globe with a few hangers-on just so that she can wave at people (here's a wee link if you want to subject yirsel tae the full itemised horror of the bill!!! God Bless Ya, Ma'am! ) but I will add that the cost is immaterial anyway. One Royal Penny would be too much for something that Belittles and Infantilises us to the degree that it it does. Let us not forget that this woman is on State Benefits and has a large family of feckless spongers who, quite clearly, have no intention of getting a job!! Personally, I think the money they've poured into their little propaganda shindig of flotillas down the Thames & concerts outside Buckingham Palace & Equestrian Events & Parades of Pomp in a time of financial austerity for the rest of us is an affront!! We're All In This Together?? YOU'RE HAVIN' A FUCKIN' LAUGH, AINCHA!?!?! 

As a failed Pop Slopper, it's true, I have only the perverse pleasure that is Schadenfreude to tickle my Twisted & Embittered fancy, but that's not the only reason that I say I do hope it fuckin' pisses down on their sad parade on Tuesday ;
It is in my resolute belief in Republicanism and steadfast adherence to that guiding tenet of Socialism that All Are Born Equal that I reject the ridiculous pantomime and bloated high camp farce of their shameful display. I reject their gaudy & tinselled procession, their tawdry & tacky show. I refute their outdated & absurd claim to privilige & entitlement and say unto thee it's time to Sweep All This Garbage Into The Historical Trashcan Where It Belongs!! 

I must remember to stop reading newspapers....unless I've had my medication......pint of 80/- please Landlord!

Still Raining, Still Dreaming!

"S t i l l   R a i n i n g ,   S t i l l   D r e a m i n g ." All of which is fine if yir name's Jimi F*****g Hendrix & you happen to be Sheltering from the Storm in some plush hotel suite, lost in Opium-Induced Reveries while libidinous young ladies anoint your inner thighs with
Q-Tips dipped in Unctious Oils from the Orient....but if yi happen tae be in the woebegone part of Scotland where S t o n e d H o l y H Q is situated and the rain has fallen unceasingly from the leaden heavens all day long, it's quite another matter entirely!! In those circumstances, I hope you will see, my Web-Logging Compatriots, that it's not so much a Purple Haze then as an Unremittingly Gray, Dull Fog!! And if, like me,  you happen to have only £11.68 to yir name in this world, you will quickly realise that it's not a case of 'still raining, still dreaming' as 'still raining, still wondering where the fuck it all went so lamentably wrong in your pitiful life as a Purveyor of Pop-Slop'...or put another way, how comes it to pass that the most exciting thing that happened to you today was seeing Susannah Reid's legs on BBC1's  'Breakfast' !! (Just as an aside to that, I'd like to mention Reporting Scotland's Catriona Shearer; one seriously Foxy Lady!!....and that, you should know, is another Hendrix reference!!)

Anyway, leaving attractive lady newsreaders aside (at least until 7.30 tomorrow morning!), it's still chucking it doon outside....and inside,
It's Raining In My Heart. Not so much because as was the case with Buddy Holly; 'the weatherman says fair today, he doesn't know you've gone away'  but because I have a melancholic disposition which is given free reign to plaque me with pleasing thoughts of sadness given my abject failure to prosper in the field I chose to dedicate my life-energy to.....and, perhaps more tellingly, the Pluvially Bedrenched Scottish Climate!!!

The Outcasts might've complained "I'm in Pittsburgh and it's Raining" but they were young and privileged American youth of the shiny 1960's who later on in the day, after they'd recorded their Classic Punk Rock Nugget, were to be found Draggin' on Main Street impressing the girls who had Mary Tyler Moore haircuts & Angora Sweaters!.....but I bet a lifetime of frustration amidst the near constant Scottish Drizzle n Downpour woulda wiped that Punk Rock Sneer off their Plooky Yankee Faces!!!

And still it rains...and still I dream :  Maybe Someday A Real Rain Will Come & Wash All The Scum Off The Streets.....yeah, maybe I should Thank God For The Rain To Wash The Trash Off The Sidewalk...

Maybe, like Tom Waits, I feel 'The Night's Too Quiet, Stretched Out Alone. I Need The Whip Of Thunder & The Wind's Dark Moan.'  Maybe 'I Want to Believe In The Mercy Of The World Again....So Make It Rain!'  

Or maybe it is that I seek respite from the Storms & Vicissitudes of life? 'Suddenly I Turned Around & She Was Standing There. With Silver Bracelets On Her Wrists & Flowers In Her Hair. She Walked Up To Me So Gracefully & Took My Crown Of Thorns....Come In She Said, I'll Give Ya Shelter From The Storm!' 

Ah Hell! It's just like John Lennon said; That When It Rains & Shines, It's Just A State Of Mind!!  I'd believe anything if it was accompanied by that guitar riff & Bravura Bass performance!........but enough of this Precipitational Flim-Flammery!!

One thing I do know in this Ripped Up, Tattered & Torn, Mixed-Up, Battered & Worn Old World and these times of Phoney Economic Austerity we currently find ourselves subjected to...& that is that A HARD RAIN'S A-GONNA FALL!!

Bring it on - my heart's made outta Stainless Steel!!

Who Killed Liddle & Queues at the Pumps!!!!

Many Moons ago, mis amigos, when yir SToNedHolYBLogGEr wiz a plooky n sexually inexperienced young buck, newly discharged upon the seemingly limitless Savannah that would be the 1980's n Margaret Thatcher's era of Blue-Rinsed Xenophobia & Little England Politics , ma Not-Quite-Stoned-N-Holy-Young-Mind wiz filled with REVOLUTION!!

Though rightly divining the Spirit of the Age to be one of Sheer Greed & Utter Vacuousness I do feel though, that in cleaving all the more to our pimpled notions of Anarchy & a Brave New World as a reaction to that, we, the little Band of Bubblegum Revolutionaries I was one of, somehow conspired to cut off our own noses to spite our faces! Being Punk Rock Zealots, we eschewed the outlandish fashion excesses & tastes of our generation and retreated instead into Revolutionary austerity. As the 80's dressed up we deliberately dressed doon. Yi get the picture ahm sure - We woz driving the wrong way up a one way street! We were a Revolutionary, if not Evolutionary Dead-End!!

But ahm no here tae gibber aboot the folly of Youth. Ahm no here tae tell yiz aw oot there in Cyberspace that instead of reading the Communist Manifesto n dreaming aboot Spectres Haunting Europe we shoulda been dancing tae Duran-Duran n shagging girls with back-combed hair n shoulder pads! Ahm no here tae say that since everybody else was goin' out n havin' fun we woz a right bunch o eejits for stayin' in n havin' NONE!! Ahm no here tae be lookin back n thinkin ah coulda been doin' something more constructive n useful, in regards to ensuring a certain amount of comfort and security in middle age, than pogoing around bedrooms tae 'Who Killed Liddle Towers' by The Angelic Upstarts.........then again, maybeez it is that I am!!

If only I had had the intelligence tae realise that by 2012, the only thing that could rouse the British Lumpen-Proletariat tae anything remotely approaching mass collective action would be the threat of there bein' nae f******g petrol in the pumps when they rolled up to refill their little metal box on rubber wheels with the personalised number plate they paid two grand for on the way to get their darling pooch pampered at the Doggy Boutique!!!!! N how the fuck are yi supposed tae get tae the tanning studio or get yir nails glued on if yi dinnae huvva car?!?!.....or get tae the Chipper for a Kebab Supper?!....or go out Dogging?! Do these Greedy Bastard Tanker Drivers not realise that we need tae get tae JB Sports tae buy another pair of trainers n a pink velour tracksuit for her-indoors?!?!....

N tae think Ah frittered away ma youth dreamin' aboot REVOLUTION!!!!!!!!!Ah dinnae ken whether Jesus wept or no'....but ahm as mad as hell n ahm no' gonna take it anymore.....(well, that last bit's not actually correct, cos I am gonna take it - I've no choice but to take it. So I'm gonna take it exactly like I've always taken it.....Squarely on the Stoned Holy Chin? No! Profoundly, up the StonedHoly Arse!!!!....OUCH!) Ach man, if yi didnae laugh yid huftae cry!!!

See yiz aw soon Pop-Pickers - Over N Oot.

30 Years of Apathy, Pathos n Delusion!!

Has it really been over a month since last I sat in the StonedHolyComputerSuite with fingertips flashing across the black, plastic keys struggling to stay abreast with the rancourous n fevered outpourings from the embittered StonedHolyBrainPan?? My, doesn't time fly when yir enjoyin' yirsel....& don't it fuckin drag something awful when yir life is one long, dreary, penniless & uneventful yawn!!! I would be happy to report that I have spent the interim period between my visitations to the Computer Generated Blogosphere, deflowering young and impressionable young ladies and immersing myself in sundry voluptuary excesses....but sadly I cannot!!!

Our StonedHolyBrother, Mr. Mojo Risin may have girded on the snakeskin breeks & declared the Palace of Wisdom to be accessible only from the Road of Excess, but it may be instructional to remember that he didnae grow up a Repressed Catholic Idiot in a Small-Minded Presbyterian Pisshole like wot the  SToneDHOLybLoGGer done! Still, we've aw got oor burdens tae bear, huv we no?....& if it hudnae been for Heaven-Sent Movers n Shakers like Brother Jim reaching out from the Hallowed Groove that is the first DOORS Long Playing Record to inform woefully Outtatouch n Outtastep Teenage Dreamers like masel that even WE could Break On Through To The Other Side, then who knows where ahd be ; a rotund, broken doon, middle aged wanker lookin at Japanese Girlies on the Tinternet no doubt.....hod oan there, Boabby.....I fuckin' am that anywayz!!!!

"Can you picture what we'll be, so limitless & free..." Oh, how those words reverberated within the cavernous and to all extent, practically empty (if you discount images of Buxom German Frauleins & thoughts of Beer!) chamber of the Stoned n Holy MindBox. Of course, lookin back from this vantage point - gained, it must be said, by way of far too many nights-in reading the works of Herman Melville and engaging in acts of self-pollution - I can clearly see now how I have singularly failed to live up to it's promise or challenge!! I have spent a life cutting myself short, holding myself back, hemmed in by the mundane ordinariness of life. Maybe that's better than finding maself full of Heroin in a Bathtub in Paris at 27.......but who's to say who got the better deal. Ahv never been tae Paris!!!

So let's get this shit sorted oot - If it hudnae been for me listening tae the Doors n huvvin my Teenage Firebrand Hopes raised n stimulated by aw that talk of fabulously exotic females & their Fingers Weaving Quick Minarets & Speaking Secret Alphabets ah coulda been in the pub right now with aw the other dejected, middle aged losers talkin aboot fitbaw n other such desperate, tragic garbage............mmmmmmm. Maybe it's true, ma Fuckin Crystal Ship huznae exactly been Filled With a Thousand Girls or a Thousand Thrills but after 30 years of Apathy, Pathos n Delusion I think I can still honestly say it's aw been worth it!!! And at least I'm in a position to grow old disgracefully - Jim Morrison never got that option.........

We're aw Riders on the Storm.....
Actors oot on loan.....
Dugs withoot a Bone!!!