Category: i hold my pen in an unusual way

30 pieces of an autobiographical nature

he’s had a dream for a year or two

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20, ossie

#20 in a series of 30. The cobalt copic fineliner pens are still holding out!

So this one is very appropriate, because right now Spurs are sitting at the top of the English Premier League, albeit after only two games. This new season has been very unusual – so far we have had no draws at all, and all of the London teams have been winning. But Spurs are top, and I’ll enjoy it while it lasts (that’ll be Saturday, then). It’s a nice change after last year, when we had to wait nine matches for our first win – and had to sack the manager to get it. Interestingly enough, the last time we won our first two matches was in 1994, when of all people Ossie Ardiles was manager! And he was sacked by November. Well, that’s Tottenham Hotspur for you.

Or “Tottingham” as Ossie used to call it. I was dumbstruck when I met him, outside the old Spurs training ground in Mill Hill, shortly before those two victories in ’94. I had met Klinsmann too of course, who had just arrived at the club, plus Sheringham, Anderton, Barmby, Mabbutt, all of those guys. After getting their autographs on a Spurs shirt (which I still have) and a few polaroids, I sat on the hood of a car to pack up my bag. And then Osvaldo CésarArdiles comes up and opens the car door! He was really nice, posed for a photo, said hello to my little sister, shook my shaking hand, and we left. He drove past as we walked down Bunn’s Lane, and actually waved. I know, it is incredible that a World-Cup winning footballer can actually say a few civil words and wave from a moving vehicle, but when you were the kid who wanted to actually be Ossie Ardiles, that is in fact a big deal. My knees were even trembly.

who washes the washmen

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19, baths

Number 19 of 30. This is the bathroom. I do only ever take showers, and showers are very nice. Especially when it is hot, there’s nothing like the energy of a shower. But I love baths. Or, rather, used to love them, when I could actually be bothered to take them. It’s probably because I grew up with a bath, and showers were something you only saw at swimming pools. Plus, when I was a kid, I hated washing my hair, because I hated water getting in my eyes. It was the absolute worst part of the day, for all involved. I could not bear it. They may as well have been pouring hydrochloric acid, rather than warm water and shampoo. And conditioner! Hah, I never understood why I needed conditioner, I kept my hair short. They did get me one of those things that go on your head to stop the water getting in your eyes, a foam circle that made me look like the planet Saturn. Hey, it worked. But even as I got older and washed my hair myself, I developed ways to avoid the shower head. I would fill the sink with water and dunk my head into it to wash my hair. Yes I’d bang my ears on the taps from time to time, and yes I’d have to refill the sink a couple of times, and yes I’d splash water onto the floor, but I got my hair clean, and on my terms. So it may be all of this that explains why, though I’m totally fine with the shower, I’ll always be a bath person. A bath person who only ever takes showers. So I’m a bit contrary, nothing new there.

god only nose

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18, crayon up nose

Number 18 of 30. What was I thinking? Well, can you remember how rational your thoughts were at age six? It was pretty silly, even for me.  I don’t recall exactly but I think I told me friend Hartman, or it might have been Mark, that I could put the crayon in my nose, but then it got stuck. The crayon was fairly small, and yes it was green. I remember that I tried to get it out, but ended up pushing it further in. I didn’t want to tell the teacher at first, Miss Welsh I think it was. When I did, they took me to the little medical room, which consisted of a hammock type bed and a strong smell of Dettol, where Mrs Lyons I think it was said I’d need to go to the hospital, so the headmaster himself, Mr Grist, drove me there. The doctors got it out with tweezers; I think about this incident every time I see a pair of tweezers now. Mr Grist drove me back to school in time for hometime, and my worried looking older brother was there to collect me from the main office. Silly boy. But I never did it again.

medieval on your ass

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17, medieval english

I enjoyed doing my MA. It was at King’s College London, so I got to spend hours every day in the incredible Maughan library in Chancery Lane, as well as the indispensable Senate House. Among other things (such as an excellent course in the literature of Medieval London), I studied Germanic Philology: specifically Old Saxon, Old High German and Gothic, as well as Old English. I travelled to Switzerland, where I actually held in my hands the oldest surviving text in the German language, the twelve-hundred year old ‘Abrogans‘ manuscript. In terms of ‘which medieval’ I studied – Anglo-Saxon or Middle English, early medieval or late, I preferred to look at the middle ground, at the supposed boundary areas where one period becomes another. How language was affected by the way its speakers chose to convert to Christianity, in Germany at least, and in England, the way French imposed itself upon English in its transition to what we call Middle English. I argued against the supposition that cross-Channel antagonism in the Hundred Year’s War led to the downfall of spoken French in England. It was all very interesting, and I learnt a massive amount, mostly about how to conduct academic research; however, I have not done quite as much research since, just bits here and there. I moved to America a week after handing in my dissertation and have lived here ever since.

it’s a bit early in the midnight hour for me

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16, i stay up too late

And so back to the as yet unnamed series! We’re in the second half now, 16 of 30. This is me looking up at my shelf. The middle part of the words have been expressed before. Oh, I have always stayed up late. I seem unable to let go of the day, for some reason. It’s not simply, “I can’t sleep”, not that at all, it’s just I don’t get tired until late. I get a burst of energy, my mind starts thinking of all these things, I draw pictures, I don’t know. Whenever I have tried to go to bed earlier, I do lie in bed awake, unable to sleep, or I wake up at all sorts of funny hours. When I was younger though, I used to be able to stay up all night, no problem; nowadays if I do that I’m suffering for days. That’s age, I guess. I’m not descended from early-to-bedders, either.

Prisoner Cell Block H…now that was my favourite show. I watched it for years; it was the first run in the UK, but it was many years behind Australia. Bea Smith, the Freak, Vinegar Tits Vera Bennett, Frankie Doyle, all classic characters. Now of course I’m going to get google search engines sending fellow Prisoner fans this way. The search engines have been sending some funny things here lately. On WordPress they tell you which searches have led people to your blog. I wish I’d documented them all, some have been hilarious. “Pissing at bus-stop” for some bizarre reason sends people here; why are so many people googling that though? “Arsenal Sketchbook” sent someone here once. But today I noticed that someone googled “Peter Scully my tour guide was useless”, and came to my blog (was that you? if so, what’s that all about?). That made me crack up laughing. Is it someone telling me about their useless tour guide, or are they saying that I was their guide and was useless (which I would contest, since I’ve not been a tourguide myself for many years so nobody who took my tour would remember my name, and anyway, I was bloody good…). Either way, I won’t lose any sleep over it. If I ever go to bed, that is.

rail of a time

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15, long train journeys

Halfway there! 15 of 30. It feels like a journey, a train of thought, one with lots of stations and the bogs are blocked. If this series was the Northern Line, I’d be at Golders Green, about to enter the tunnel below Hampstead, on my way to the pub in Camden Town.

I like travelling by train, and alone, so I can read, or draw, and have my headphones on, and look out of the window. Except if I do need to go to the toilet I worry about leaving my stuff. And if I take it with me, I worry about someone nicking my seat, you know you get those people who seem to spend the entire train journey shuffling up and down the corridors, never actually sitting down anywhere. Then you get those people who don’t sit next to the window, but put their bags there, so nobody will ask to sit there. The ticket inspector inspects your ticket, and places that little magic piece of card above your seat, which magically compells you to sit there forever until your stop, so that if a smelly or noisy person sits nearby, you can’t move, because the inspector will think you’re a new person. Then there’s those compartments above the seat for your bags, which are always just too small for your bag, and you just know you’ll leave it up there and forget (I have done this). Then there’s the ones that cross borders several times in the night, all the stopping and starting, the inspector wakes you up to check tickets, then the passport man comes in to look at passports, then after an hour sat on the border you roll across, having finally gotten back to sleep, only for another passport controller to come in and check you are who you’re supposed to be, along with another ticket inspector an hour or so later, and then the whole thing is repeated a few hours of non-sleep later as you cross into a new country. Then the hordes of people sleeping on the floor in the aisles, plus the lads from the Hungarian hostels coming on board to wake you up and attempt to get your business. Then you have those stories of gangs of thieves who enter trains at night, and gas those little compartments where everyone is sleeping so they won’t wake up, ransacking their bags for cameras and money, and vanish into the night. Then there’s those Agatha Christie murders. I’ll tell you one thing though, if you are getting those night trains, get on board early and get the window seat so you have something to lean against. Better still, get a reservation at the station and insist on the window, that way if someone is sat there already, you can make them move, waving your reservation at them. I had to do this once. After too many night trains where I was the one sat in the middle, unable to doze off, I didn’t care.

Fifteen more entries to go!

it don’t matter if you’re black or white

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14, chess

#14 of 30. I practically never play chess any more. This set was bought in Brussels, ten years ago, in a cool toyshop called Grasshopper. I remember the first games I played on it, at the historic A La Mort Subite cafe, against a bloke from Swindon, a fellow teaching assistant who was living in Liege. I won those encounters. I was still fairly sharp then. I had a few tricks, mostly ones my brother taught me, but these days the world would be wise to my tricks. I remember playing one match, at a hostel in Budapest (all these places, eh), against an American backpacker. Showing off, I told a girl sitting next to me that I would checkmate my opponent in ten moves, and asked her to count them. Exactly ten moves later, checkmate. Truth was, I could have checkmated in one move, but decided to show off, and distract my opponent by letting him take my queen and other important pieces, before moving my rook up and catching his trapped king. People were actually stunned. That was very cheeky. I doubt I would have the cockiness any more. I’m also too predictable; I only ever play as white (so I can control the opening), and almost always play with the same opening move, as seen above. But then, that is also a ruse, to make my opponent think I am predictable…

*

So Michael Jackson is dead! That was a shock. Quite a big shock. Right before his big tour of the Millenium Dome. I did notice the internet slowed down right after I was told the news. He was undoubtedly a massive talent, one of the all-time pop greats from a very early age, but it was a ruined legend; whatever the truth of those allegations (and he was after all acquitted), his persona was increasingly an unbelievable freakshow, Wacko Jacko, and he produced no decent music after Dangerous. I think he will be remembered as two people. No, not the ‘Black Michael’ and the ‘White Michael’, but as the brilliant prodigious pop genius of the 70s and 80s,  and the sad, degenerating figure of the 90s and 2000s, with the crazy, ever-loyal army of fans. The Bashir interview proved his ultimate undoing; even long-time loyal fans of his (my oldest friend being one) couldn’t believe what a serious joke he’d become (“no Martin, I am Peter Pan!”), and couldn’t quite swallow the strange things he was saying about his professed relationships with kids, nor the allegations that were made. Who knows whether he would have won back public respect, after his comeback tour? (you know, isn’t really a tour if you’re just playing one venue over and over, that’s called a residency) It might have helped him pay off some of his debts. As it is, his music is now selling out across the world, he has become a one-man economic stimulus. Untimely death can often be the best thing that happens to pop legends, especially fallen ones. I think I still have somewhere one Sunday tabloid rag from the morning after Princess Diana died  (here’s the obligatory Diana comparison). On the cover it was all about Our Princess of Hearts is Dead, etc, while just a few pages in, the editors hadn’t scrapped the already published stories of What a Disgrace Diana is, Shame on Her etc. Fickle just isn’t the word. I don’t think the Jacko media circus is over just yet. Expect the eventual biopic to sweep the board at the Oscars.

“many ugly strawberries”

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12, strawberries in denmark

#12 of 30. Denmark, the summer of ’95, strawberries, adidas shorts, and those coins with the holes in them. I was only nineteen, but I felt like an old man of nineteen. I learnt a lot of things. I learnt that when traversing Copenhagen station (or any train station), have a bag that has wheels, or at least some sort of discernible shape, one that doesn’t look like you’re hauling a body bag with a live body in it on your shoulders. It took me approximately a day and a half to reach the strawberry farm in the south of the island of Funen from Victoria station in London, which seems an extraordinary amount of time now that we live in the age of budget airlines and long bridges. In 1995, the dreaded Eurolines buses were the way to go, and Denmark was a nation of many ferry rides. It took almost 24 hours to reach Copenhagen, and from there I went via a mixture of trains, ferries, locals buses and a lift from a chip-shop owner, until I pitched my tent in the dark, and proceeded to spend the rest of the summer picking strawberries, busking in the street with my fellow jordbærplukkers and writing postcards.

Sometimes the picking was not good. The farmer, Bjarne (who I was told was nicknamed the Terminator because of his voice), would inspect each punnet, and if he didn’t like what he saw he would admonish you with the slow mechanical line, “many ugly strawberries”. Usually, ugly ones would be eaten mid-pick, since they were juicier, or even used for jam, but you were paid by the kilo, so more often the jordbærplukkers would hide big fat ugly ones under nice tender pretty ones. On the other hand, a nice punnet of shiny, shapely strawbs would be rewarded with a cool “many beautiful strawberries”. Sometimes the work would be frustrating, cold, back-breaking, sometimes it would be hot, back-breaking and frustrating. Often it would be fun though; the other jordbærplukkers, plucked from around the UK and Europe, were a great laugh. Sometimes we would meet the raspberry pickers from a nearby farm, sometimes hang out with locals, such as ‘Scouse’ Claus, who spoke in a broad Liverpool accent but had never been anywhere near the Mersey (he did work on a ferry though). People are very friendly in Denmark, the friendliest country I’ve ever been to.

It really did put me off strawberries though. I had nightmares about them, giant strawbs chasing me down the street, big piles of them every time I closed my eyes. That horrible red juice would just not wash from my hands, leaving me scrubbing like Macbeth for days after the last berry was picked. What little money I had left as the strawb season closed i used to jaunt around the country for a few days, first to Århus in the north, finally to Copenhagen, where I forewent a night in a packed and sweaty hostel, preferring to spend my last few kroner locking up my unwieldy luggage at the station and crooning in a karaoke bar, where locals bought me drinks and told me stories. When the sun came up, I got on a bus to England, with only a single krone left. I put that coin on a piece of string I found, and wore it all the way home, and for some time afterwards. I wonder where it is now.

we mean it, man

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11, a band called gonads

#11 in the series. I have a box full of old cassettes, ones I’ve owned my whole life. Gonads, that was my band at school; I didn’t sing, but I played the guitar (well, I strummed it and my fingers made chord shapes every so often). The singer, Hooker, was very good. One year he sang in front of the whole school in only his y-fronts, and a beret, if memory serves. I also wrote the songs. Three, four chords. Sometimes we’d just improvise. Once we improvised an entire gospel piece, which still makes me laugh to this day. The song about Jacques Delors was very catchy, and was full of absurdist lyrics parodying the absurd Europhobic headlines of the day, all about banning crisp flavours and killing off willo-the-wisp. We had some of those teenage songs about girls, too, like the ‘Great Unnamed Love Song’, and we covered (rather, absolutely slaughtered beyond recognition) stuff from Sex Pistols to Bryan Adams to Wonderstuff. We were obsessed with ‘Enter the Dragon’. And we had a song about the people who sell the Evening Standard down in London, based pretty much on an encounter we had near Bank station with one particularly incomprehensible vendor. The things that inspire you when you’re fifteen.

Oh we sounded absolutely dreadful, but it was just great fun. Something I’m proud of. If you like I will tell you where you can hear some of it.