Oh Georgie. Distressing news I have for you. Sven, he is arrested by British Police (best in world – the buggers) and they bung him in chokey.

I receive from him gobbled message on telephone. Customs man ask for what purpose is visit to UK? Sven tell him he seeks employment. And to prove he speak truth he show small selection of videos he bring to demonstrate creativity of his producing and directing at hopeful interviews with movie people.

This is mistake.

They call him illegal immigrunt plus other names and lock him up.

Now this is where you are coming in my beloved. Sven is kindly requesting you catch train and go to this place called Harvich and tell police he is good man, and you will take responsible for him and accommodate him. Also pay bail money.

Sven say not a lot to ask since you owe him many thousand Euros. Say tell the **** if he knows what good for him he will get his arse down here, pronto. (Actually, Sven does not use **** but say real word which Anna too embarrassed to repeat especially since you are not one – well only sometimes).

But on brighter side of things, I am delightful to be conversing with you again even though in the space of cyberman.
Always with the big words you are making, Georgie. (Beautiful though) so I am having to get some of these transcripted for me by Olaf at the pharmacy – in return for small favour.
But this I am not minding because I am keen to make bigger my collection of English words. (My English is coming on by leaps and jumps, as you say).

One thing I am not understanding is why you have lesbian to take you to cleaners. Why are you not able to go to such place on your own? You are big boy now, Georgie, and should be seeing to own cleaning of the clothes.

My heart will stop beating until I hear from you again.

Your loving Anna

(you say no one read blog but I see comment from RJ Adams??)

Love changes everything

****************************************************


My Scandinavian Sweetheart

A ray of Swedish sunshine lights up the war-torn landscape of my life, illuminating the shell holes, the torn and blackened trees of the no-man’s-land, upon which I gaze out fom my foxhole, this July morning.

Actually, it is only by chance that I logged on to my blog. I have not visited it for some time, partly because no one reads it but also because I lack a broadband connection. Mr Brown (our leader – perhaps you have heard of him?) assures us that every home in the country will have free access to the internet, sometime in the not too distant future.
But it is now, Mr Brown, that we need it. Also what about those who do not have a ‘home’? Those who the police like to describe as having ‘no fixed abode’?
It is to this category that I, myself, belong. (Through no fault of my own, I might add.) Those who find ‘travelling’ more suited to their circumstances.

Don’t’ think I am complaining, because I am not. At least I don’t live in Gaza or Kabul.

It was very smart of you, getting old Gregor to read the tattoo. I have now memorised the password so you could get it erased or perhaps done over with something more aesthetic. (There are some very attractive designs that incorporate scar tissue as a part of the motif – but no doubt, living in such a liberated land, you know all this.)

It was not so smart asking that head-banger of a brother to deliver a letter to me. He still believes I owe him money. Luckily, it is extremely unlikely that he will find me because of my itinerant lifestyle.

I would love to be able to climb aboard a ferry and sail into your arms. Money, however, is the problem – or lack of it, to be more precise. I don’t know where it has all gone. Of course the lesbian really took me to the cleaners but even so… Anyway, let us not dwell on such fiscal matters just now.

The doctor sent me for some blood tests; they came back ‘normal’. So how come I feel like shit every morning, tired, and wanting to sleep all the time? And the irritable bowel syndrome is giving me gyp even as I type this.

A friend tells me that it is all in the mind, that I am blocking my emotions, denying my anger. I think she might have something there. But how does one unblock one’s emotions?

When I woke this morning, I saw a hand sticking out from the covers. This is not my hand, I thought. Look at the skin, all wrinkled like the neck of a tortoise. And of course it wasn’t – it was that of my girlfriend.
That was a lie. It really was my hand. I don’t have a girlfriend. Which, as you can imagine, for a man of my libido presents a real problem!

Well my time on this machine is running out – I use the local library machines. I used to think it sad when I came into a library and saw all the unemployed, the down-and-outs, the vagrants, sitting there, reading the newspapers, now, I find I am one of them!

Write again, soon. This is probably a good way for us to communicate – I don’t mind the world seeing our correspondence – though, as I say, I don’t think anyone reads this blog anyway.


Your lover (at a distance)

George

My Dearest Georgie

I am taking this drastical step to get touch with you because all else has failed. I send you letter to your home address which you have perhaps quit and buggers are not forwarding to you.

So desperate I get my brother Sven to deliver by the hand a letter to you my love. Sven coming to England because he is made reduced from Swedish porn industry on account of the credit crunching and stuff (it always the essential industries what is first to suffer in such trying times). And he hoping to get job in British video trade which he think is doing very well at the moment.

But Sven is not most reliable of persons so I have to take such step in hope you will not be angry with your Anna.

I suddenly remember how we once go to tattooing parlour for having your password inscripted on very private part of Anna’s body, in case you are forgetting it – the password, not Anna’s body, for how could you forget that, eh, lover boy!

Any road up (see how I remember English collequiasms) I ask Gregor (cameraman, you remember him?) if he will look and write down password for me. Don’t worry. I get him promise to forget it in return for small favour I do for him. He got very small intention span anyway.

Your Anna have been reduced in circumstances to working in sweat shop. You have these in England yes? Little shop that sell sweats and chocoletz? Plus the Coke – which is not the kind for the snorting up of the nose, but well known American fizzy drink which also get up nose but not with same effect – ha ha, little Swedish joke.
Busy time for Anna when little kiddiwinkles coming home from school and wanting the Mars Bars and other such muck. And looking at Anna’s bottom when she bends down for the liquorice torpedo – little buggers.

Lady what own shop has dead husband, so is lonely. After shop close she often invite me upstairs to partake glass of gin and discuss economic crisis and other activities.

Anna miss terribly her Georgie. How about slipping over on Stenna Line? We can make hay while moon shines, eh? Have not had sexual proclivities filled for some time – well not by male person.

Hoping this letter is finding you as is leaving me. (That little trouble have all cleared up now. I am thinking the anti bioptrics done the trick – I was getting nowhere with the live yoghurt, though I eat many tubs of the shit.)

Hoping to enjoy the pleasure of you before long. think of you every day as I dish out the gob-stoppers.

Your little playmate

Anna

The return of the Prodigal Son

***********************************************************

"As soon as this pub closes,
The revolution starts."

Who decides who is mad?

There must be something the matter with him

because he would not be acting as he does

unless there was

therefore he is acting as he is

because there is something the matter with him



He does not think there is anything the matter with

him

because

one of the things that is

the matter with him

is that he does not think there is anything the

matter with him

therefore

we have to help him realize that,

the fact that he does not think there is anything the

matter with him

is one of the things that is

the matter with him



R D Laing















--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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*******************************************************************************

Therefore send not to ask for whom the blue lights flash -
They flash for you.

Tuesday, 30th December

************************************************

I awake at 6.30am with these lines in my head:


Come to the edge.
It’s where I live –
Come, see the drop below;
Don’t be afraid – here,
Take my hand –
I will not let you fall,
I just want to show you
Where I live.

"I've been to paradise - but I've never been to me."

***********************************************************************


So sang Charlene.

And I wondered if I had ever been to me. Is there a ‘me’ somewhere hidden under all the stuff that has been layered upon me? Under all the socialization, the ‘educating’, the moulding etc etc.?

Or is it like an onion? You peel off layer after layer, only to find when you get to the middle – there is no onion left?

Perhaps the only ‘me’ is all those layers. Strip them away, and what have you got left?

I hope it isn’t like this though. But if I am not the layers… what is this ‘something else’ that is the real me?

I think I really know the answer.


It is bloody freezing here. I went to feed the swans and the ducks and the birds and things – Friday, that was. They live on the canal at Spike Island. I understand that this was the first canal to be built in England. It fell into disrepair of course, but they have cleaned it up, and there is a sort of marina there. The canal connects, via a lock, to the river Mersey and thence to the sea. So the boats are sea-going vessels.

I would like a sea going boat. I believe I have an affinity with the sea. Perhaps – if you believe in reincarnation – I was a seafarer in a previous life. Or, if you don’t believe in reincarnation, something may have been carried over in my genes from a distant ancestor who was, perhaps, a pirate.

I haven’t heard from Anastasia. I sent her a Christmas card but I didn’t get one back. Sometimes it is difficult to understand people – don’t you think? I often think about those long legs of hers.

Depression is a much over-used word. Could I perhaps say I am ‘clinically fed-up’? Or ‘clinically pissed-off’. I don’t think either of those diagnoses are in the DSM – perhaps they should be. Or how about suffering from ‘Ups and Downs Syndrome’?

I went to a funeral just before Christmas. His name was John and he did a lot of painting and decorating for us at Wynorin. So much so, that he became a friend.

Being a Roman Catholic, he had Requiem Mass. I just stood up and sat down as instructed. It was John I went for – not a religious ceremony. Nevertheless, one wonders where John is now. It is not a silly question. The priest seemed pretty certain. But then, he’s in the trade – so to speak.

We’re back to the onion again. I mean all the ‘layers’ that I knew as ‘John’ are all gone. But is there a bit in the middle that goes on somewhere? And if so, where does it go? And is that bit the John I knew?

Anyway, I can’t sit here talking to you all night. In fact, it is only six in the evening in America, but in Australia it is 11am tomorrow – which is not here yet, as far as me and America are concerned. So what time is it really?

By the way: one last word on canals. On the Illinois Canal they put the towpath on the right bank. In England – just to be different – we put the towpath on the left bank. Which is why, when the motorcar was invented in England by Maurice Cowley, he chose to drive it on the left hand side of the road. The rest of the world – when they caught up – decided (just to be awkward) to drive on the right.

ON THE ILLINOIS CANAL

*************************************

It is not often I devote a post to a comment from a reader. I would, however, like to clear up the small matter of the Illinois Canal.
You were quite right, RJ in taking me to task for failing to mention that national heritage. It was just that the canal is so famous that I sort of took it for granted - if you know what I mean.

In fact, as devotees of folk music will be aware, the canal has been immortalised in song by that doyen of the American folk scene, Long John Jackson (a formative influence on the young Bob Dylan). I myself have a record made at a live performance by Long John at a concert in Chicago in 1950.

There are seven verses, but I will just give the first verse and the chorus:

ON THE ILLINOIS CANAL.

It was on the Illinois Canal,
My wife sailed off, with my best pal;
I can't recall her name, but Joe,
My bosom friend,
I miss him so.

Chorus

With a half hitch, a half hitch,
And a bowline on a bight,
We're bound for old Chicago -
We'll be there by Friday night.


What many people do not know is the the canal was never intended as such. The 'Ditch' as it was originally called, came about as a sort of early YTS scheme to provide employment and get the youth of Chicago off the streets.

The intention was that, once it had been dug, it was to be filled in again. But the Friday of its completion was followd by a weekend of heay rain. When president Polk, who happened to be in Chicago at the time, saw the waterlogged ditch, he had a brainwave: "We could float boats on that, and we've got a cheap transport system." he exclaimed. "Of course we will need more water but the Great Lakes aren't that far away, are they?"

Of course it wasn't quite as simple as that. But with a few locks here and there, and American ingenuity, the Illinois Canal was born.

And it was this famous canal that gave the British the idea for a series of (much smaller) canals, criss-crossing the country and providing transport for coal and such like.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

MAN'S FALSE LEG FOUND UNDER ROLLER COASTER

*****************************************************

I went to see my doctor last week. Well, my real doctor was fully booked: he specialises in gynaecology, and I guess there must be a lot of that about at this time of year.

I saw a lady doctor. She’s very nice. She said, “Perhaps you should up your medication.”
“Up yours” I retorted. No I didn’t, because I think she has a point. I have always been reluctant to increase the dosage, but what the heck: it’s the time of year that always gets to me, so this time I will accept a bit of help – even if it is of the chemical variety.

Ophelia (Actually her name is Helen but I like to think of her as Dr Ophelia Pulse) also agreed to refer me for a course of CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, to any cork-heads out there). I told Ophelia that I call it the ‘Microwave Therapy’ – how she laughed.

Competition news

There was no outright winner of last week’s “Complete the song title” competition.

“There’s a rainbow round my …”

“All the nice girls love a …”

Although there were some pretty inventive entries, the answers we were looking for were, of course: “shoulder” and “sailor”.

And by the way RJ, regarding your post, trivialising my condition: I do not believe a word of your story about a Christmas song. I judge it as another of your flights of fancy – along with your alleged adventures on canals. I have had a look at Illinois with that Google Earth thing, and there is not a canal in sight, let alone a Narrowboat.


I read in the newspaper that a man's false leg had been found under the roller-coaster at Alton Towers, during a cleaning up operation.

Management are appealing for the owner to come forward.

Limping presumably.