Statue 71 meanwhile...

only stands and waits.

Crosby Beach.

Been to Crosby Beach again today. I took loads of photos but unfortunately can't seem to upload them more than one at a time. So, here's one to wet the appetite whilst I try and sort out the problem.

I went with a mate Vanessa and we walked virtually the full exhibition length (approximately two K by the way). The beach was wonderful, the exhibition superb, the weather loverly and the public loos grim. About that I'll say no more.

It was impressive to see so many children, adults, even dogs enjoying the statues. On statue 99 there was dog pee which I thought typical. You expose them to a bit of culture and if they can't eat it, fuck it or wee on it then no meaning is possible. Dogs, can't live with them... er, can't live with them.

The Mersey was busy with big ships coming and going, most probably related to the high tide that occured as we arrived. Not that I'm implying the tide had anything to do with us, oh no.

Back in Manchester I now think of that tide carrying ships into port, its steady swell easing ships out of port, it's gentle waves washing the feet of statue 99...

Today a structural engineer...

visited my little home to look at a wall crack. Five years ago the gable end to my house was becoming detached and had to be re-pinned. These blokes came round with a van and lifted floorboards, drilled holes, poked things through, twisted metal into brick, secured rods onto joists, one per metre front to back on the first and second elevations. They had certificates and letters after their names, were members of guilds and stuff. One of them arrived today (fulfilling his obligation to their 25 year guarantee of workmanship) and declared my wall unmoved. Said he thought the crack (to describe it as .5mm would be generous) was a bit of shrinkage on some duff plastering I did a couple of years ago. Hey, the man's in a guild, he speaks the truth. It was a relief.

I called the engineers originally after becoming worried the gable end might fall away when I was on the loo. Think of how distressing that would be. A double whammy, house wrecked and eternal shame in one fell swoop. Sod those crushed under falling masonry. People might see me doing my business.

The current crack is situated opposite the loo in the bathroom. I sometimes worry that I'm being watched, maybe through the crack. I tried explaining this to the engineer but he said it was unlikely. Unlikely? I took comfort from the fact he might be an expert on gables but knew bugger all about ga ga.

Sanity has temporarily prevailed...

in Liverpool as the burghers of Sefton vote to reprieve Anthony Gormley's exhibition Another Place on Crosby Beach. Hurrah! I'm going on Sunday to look at it once more but this time with my new Nikon D50 camera that I've finally purchased to replace the one stolen. Boooooo! So I'm happy. Hurrah and a downright almighty Huzzah too!

Not that I wish to appear materialistic but as mentioned passim I loved that camera more than life itself and once stolen it was as if a limb had been lopped from my withered frame. Now I am restored and once again photographs shall grace this old blog of mine. That is, as soon as I can learn again how to use the damn thing.

Mini huzzah!

It's really complicated...

I returned to work...

with a song in my heart. Of course the innards are not quite right but that's innards for you. In my experience innards can be tricky so it's best to take care of them. Take care of your innards and they'll take care of you I'm sure someone once said. Amen to that.

In Catholicism the Sacred Heart is an important icon with which I was often confronted as a small child. Bluntly put, the image is of Jesus chest cracked open to reveal his glowing heart. The holy organ exposed not for gory but glory. One shudders to think of how they'd represent the sacred colon. Some might declare it sacriligous to raise such an issue but pourquoi? Doth the scriptures not proclaim, "No blessed innard shall be higher than another. And thrice nay?"

Or as John Wayne so wisely observed in The Greatest Story Ever Told, "This colon truly was the sump of God."

I'm feeling...

better today. Remarkably, despite being as sick as the proverbial mutt I've not been drawn to daytime tv. Phew, at least the power to live has not yet fled, which probably means I'll be okay and am through the worst. I posted this last year and really haven't changed my opinion regarding the mindnumbing banality daytime television represents. D/tv reminds me of those straws used by ancient Egyptian embalmers to suck brain from the skulls of dead Pharoahs.

Don't get me wrong my criticism is not of the audience, it's of the producers for making this crap.

I'm going to lie down.

Grrrr.

Since Friday...

I've been a sick as a dog. Bleurgh!

I really like beetroot...

pickled or otherwise. I'm a lover of all things pickled except sparrows. Once in Cyprus I happened upon a shop with jars of what I took to be misshapen pickled eggs. The owner said they were pickled sparrows. Returning to the UK I feverishly sought out pickling books but found no mention of the humble sparrow. Recently sparrows in the UK have been in decline, much to the puzzlement of scientists. Hmmm. Might be time to look once more in the pickling section of my local bookshop. Might find an answer, save sparrows, maybe win a prize. Become known as Sparrow Dan.

Maybe not.

My mate...

Jo's cellar is flooded. Me and Sean are going for a tattoo each next Saturday. At a works do on Friday night I told another friend I had the hots for her

I'm currently reading The History of Love by Nicole Krauss because I was struggling to get into John Banville's The Sea. Not sure what the Banville problem is but I'm on page 43 and still haven't got the novel's rhythm. Most frustrating. On the other hand the Krauss caught me on the first page.

Yada yada yada.



Just come across this. Earlier last week Government Minister Jack Straw (one of the architects of Britain's disastrous involvement in Iraq) made a statement saying Muslim women should not wear the chador or full veil. He insists such women who attend his surgery remove their headwear.

I like this response from the Respect Party.


Straw should hide his face in shame
A woman's right to choose. Defend diversity.

Anti-war campaigners will be amongst those protesting outside Jack Straw's office in Blackburn tomorrow (Sat).

And Stop The War founder and, longtime womens rights campaigner, Lindsey German, believes Jack Straw's remarks will do nothing to serve the cause of community relations in Britain. "Nobody could see Mr Straw's face when he chose to "communicate" his views in a newspaper column or again on the Today programme, a radio programme, this morning," said Lindsey.

"He knew perfectly well that we did not see his eyes, ears, nose, mouth or indeed any part of his body to make his uncomfortable views plain. "To expect some Muslim women to make him feel more comfortable by disrobing is both a sleezy and racist attack.

"His own, less than sartorial, dress code does not appear the epitome of good manners to victims of the illegal war in Iraq to which he was so central.

"Britain would be alot better off if Jack Straw were to hide his face in shame!"

Some autumn poems to set the post summer mood...

Autumn by William Carlos Williams

A stand of people
by an open

grave underneath
the heavy leaves

celebrates
the cut and fill

for the new road
where

an old man
on his knees

reaps a basket-
ful of

matted grasses for
his goats.

This is a wintry one by Seamus Heaney but I like it for the mood

Sloe Gin by Seamus Heaney

The clear weather of juniper
darkened into winter.
She fed gin to sloes
and sealed the glass container.

When I unscrewed it
I smelled the disturbed
tart stillness of a bush
rising through the pantry.

When I poured it
it had a cutting edge
and flamed
like Betelgeuse.

I drink to you
in smoke-mirled, blue-
black sloes, bitter
and dependable.


Burning the Small Dead by Gary Snyder

Burning the small dead
branches
broke from beneath
thick spreading
whitebark pine.
A hundred summers
snowmelt rock and air
hiss in a twisted bough.

And of course the great Matsuo Basho

Autumn moonlight

Autumn moonlight--
a worm digs silently
into the chestnut.

Yesterday, driving...

home from work eastbound on the elevated Mancunian Way a black van with black windows harassed me. In the outside lane of busy traffic I drifted past slower vehicles watching for my exit. From the rear I saw a black van jinking between lanes, undertaking and overtaking until it was so close the wasp insignia on its bonnet filled my mirror and I thought, hmmm. Cool was my name calm was my disposition as I mooched at 40mph toward the exit. Waspy van meanwhile exuded irritation, bobbing a bit this way drifting a bit that way, not easy in the two eastward lanes that trapped us both. Seeing a space I moved to let it pass and once alongside its passenger window descended showing the driver to be a huge wasp giving me the V. Such rudeness.

"Fuck you too wasp!' I shouted "And it's autumn, not much time remaining for your kind. Yeah!"

But she was gone.

Whilst descending from the M way I noticed a squirrel truck pass in the opposite direction loaded with acorns. The driver seemed exhausted and smiled weakly, at least I thought it was a smile but it might have been a grimace because with squirrels it's sometimes hard to gauge. Recently I gave wide berth to a squirrel whose grimace reminded me of Humphrey Bogart, he was sipping bourbon from an acorn cup in Crowcroft Park. Later beneath his home tree I declaimed Ode to Autumn by John Keats hoping it might raise a cheer but on verse two he hiccuped out of his hole and told me to fuck off.

So for the rest of you

Ode to Autumn, by John Keats.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

It occurs to me...

and not for the first time that dogs are astonishingly dim. This afternoon in Salford I followed a white van from whose passenger window poked the head of a small dog with tufty hair and lolling tongue. There are those for whom such a sight might indicate intelligence or even higher cerebral function like a thought, say...

"Hmmm it's too hot. I know, I'll lean out of this window. Yup, that's done the trick."

Except it didn't calculate the lampost that whacked the fucker's head right off. Bounced straight over the bonnet of my car and into the road behind where it was crushed by a lorry. The dog didn't even notice. Now how thick is that?

This evening's golden sunset...

was pressed beneath the weight of a stupendous maroon sky.

John Wayne's 1968 film 'The Green Berets' concludes on Danang beach where he too gazed at a wondrous sunset though one dipping eastward over the South China Sea. If Mr Wayne wanted a sunset he got one, no matter what the geography. I'm not keen on eastward setting suns because the view from the rear of my house is not so good.

Reflecting on this I thanked the heavens (literally) that JW is no longer with us.

As a matter of principle...

whenever in France I make an effort to eat horse.

In the part of Manchester where...

I work is a shop that sells pig snouts. I noticed it the other day whilst window shopping at 'Hooves'. 'Hooves' is a specialist emporium devoted to all things hoovey. Arranged in the window are hooves for every ocassion. Horses hooves (of course) cows hooves, the hooves of goats, gazelle, sheep, you name it they've got it. Some of the hooves were fashioned into tasteful ornaments that would grace any living room. Others were formed into vessels for the safe soaking of things such as false teeth overnight, or say in a matching pair of fawn's hooves, contact lenses. I understand an attempt was made to hollow out an unusual casserole dish from the hoof of a waterbuffalo but apparently it melted and stuck the oven door shut. That particular line failed shortly before the Hooves stock exchange disaster when gum futures went belly up. Thankfully the business survived, as does the shop motto, 'Your never alone with a hoof.'

The pig snout thing is curious though so I went in and was confronted with an embarrassment of riches, in the pig snout arena that is. There were toffee pig snouts on sticks, frozen pig snouts dipped in flavoured yoghurt. Pig snout shavings soaked in maple syrup. Pig snout glace for the decoration of cakes. Candied piglet snouts arranged as necklaces that children could wear and eat at the same time. Two pig snouts tied fashionably with silk proved popular with ten pin bowlers as a means of keeping fingers toasty. Behind the counter stood glass jars bulging with pig snout joy but my eye was drawn to the caramelled pig snout brittle as I'm particularly fond of brittle. I purchased half a pound of this pig snout heaven, this dialectic of deliciousness, for everyone knows once the brittle is gone the chewing goes on. Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmmmmmmmmm...

Everyday since...

I saw the physio last Wednesday at his insistence I've been putting a hot gel pack on my injured knee to promote healing and ease pain. Amazingly the knee pain has gone, completely eclipsed by huge burn on leg pain. Well, it's a solution of sorts.

Went to see...

a physiotherapist this early evening. He worked on my knee for an hour, squeezing, pressing, kneeding, pushing, working his fingers into that damaged ligament. Then he got hot gel packs and did some more business. Me? I groaned and moaned and cursed and winced and cried and begged, I even offered my PIN number to make him stop but there was no mercy in his dark professional heart. I was reminded of those westerns when the wounded gunslinger gets a piece of wood to bite on while they dig the bullet out of his gut. I would have killed for a piece of wood.

And he laughed, oh how he laughed, all the way through. He told me I was a bad boy, that I required punishment,that I must be punished, that I deserve the cane... no, sorry, that was another therapist...

Hmmm, note to self. Must not mix up therapists.

Anyway it bloody hurt.

Went out jogging in...

Crowcroft Park last night and blew a ligament in my knee. Said knee currently looks like a balloon in middle of leg. Indeed I've hired Lilliputians to tie the thing down so I can get a good night's sleep. Were it not for the Lilliputians being up all night drinking and afornicating I'd be having a good night's sleep.

Never let Lilliputians in your bed. They're worse than crumbs.

There's this mad idea...

that fortunes can be read in the leaves of tea. I'm a tea-bag person and resultingly always thought my future would remain a secret. Dropping a tea box this morning I swear the liberated bags fell into the winning sequence for tonight's national lottery.

I'm sceptical. A number of the smaller bags had arranged themselves into lawyerspeak declaring that the fortune hereto produced was subject to errors depending on whether they were opened for morning tea or evening tea and therefore any fortune could be deemed invalid if the correct conditions were not met. Unfortunately the correct condions had fallen under the washer so I've no idea what they were. By now the shebang had become so stressfull I got the hoover out.

And it wasn't even lunchtime.

So I went back to bed.

With a coffee.

A less malign drink.

I find.

Even though the funfair...

has gone Crowcroft Park remains unsettled. The field arena is scarred with deep gouges made by heavy machinery, huge grooves filled with rainwater criss cross the area. Yellowed templates mark the grass where rides such as The Vomitarium, Sick Your Guts Up and the crude but effective Heave! temporarily stood. It was really no surprise that anything by Barf Bros might feature spinning as the central entertainment feature. Incidentally the entrance was indicated by a huge open mouthed neon head that in green and yellow lines sprayed the letters Barf Bros in an arc under which patrons passed. Nice touch I remember thinking, the whole event begins with someone being sick on your head. I'm not going to go on an on about this (see 21/8 blog for that) except to say that the experience of being washed, sprayed, sluiced, and flooded by the gallons of sick thrown from the rides left my skin wrinkly for days. For those who can't be bothered reading the previous blog I'll give you a taste, urf urf. One ride popular with the local youth was simply called 'Bucket'. It entailed being spun round in a large wooden bucket (plus handle) until your stomach was empty. When the exit sluices opened patrons not removed on the swell were flushed from the machine by rough types wielding high pressure hoses, so no matter how badly you might feel it really was in your interest to get up. Some laughing youth deliberately held on for the hosing, but hey, folly is youth's middle name.

However, the purpose of this post is to record how odd the park remains. Yesterday I kept glimsping things whilst jogging around the inner perimeter, movements that drew my eye, strange objects that were there and then gone. I'm sure I saw groaning bodies and other detritus caught against the parks railings as if a great tide had passed but when I looked directly all was normal. A gnarled oak that used to lean east-west now leans west-east and the line of old bench seats popular with the elderly have begun nipping wildly aside just as people are about to sit. Of course the elderly blame the youth except there no longer seems to be much youth. At the park entrance some families have put up posters asking have you seen this young person or that young person but no one really knows.

It's as if the fair left holes in the grass and holes in the neighbourhood.

Funny, I now recall reading in large copperplate letters on the padlocked doors of their final lorry as it pulled away, Barf Bros of Hamelin.

Hmmmm...