Posts

Showing posts from February, 2026

Acrylic dad and daughter

Image
​ Not much detail on these two. Down by the river? I listened to it on my dads record player he give me that I set up on a little table by the radiator. It went on for ages. It was summer. I was wandering around with some friends from school. I was smoking lots of cigarettes and posing for lots of pictures on bollards and bits and pieces. I had on this tight jacket that wasn’t mine I was wandering along in the evening light with my mate Mark who was into all the really heavy stuff I found a bit frightening. We stayed up and smoked cigarettes and drank coffee and watched films. We went to the Shell garage for more cigarettes. It was the middle of the night. It was warm. It never got properly dark. The sky was black but it was blue.  None of which has anything to do with this picture. I think it looks like it was by the sea, but it might have been on a park bench or outside HMV. 

The Charcoal Fields

Image
​ Yes, I have received word that you have been out strolling in the charcoal fields.  You have been seeking something, it seems. Perhaps your car keys? Or maybe  a mitten you mislaid? By chance a bag of your dog’s excrement? Did you tie it to a tree? Why did you tie it to a tree? No reply. Anyway, as you stroll be sure to admire the sky. It is a magnificent sky when you can see it. And when you can’t the cloud formations are quite something. Going slowly over, indifferent to you and your rota and how it is managed, they are the gargantuan beauties for free and no subscription.  But let us be clear, the  above view is of a field along sone woodland that I like, particularly in the early morning. But I don’t always make it at night because you have to walk past the pine trees at night and it makes me think of the Sword in the Stone, I think, when the wolves eyes appear in the darkness of the woods.  Nights I usually spend in the bottom field at the end of the lane...

The Chaps in Charcoal

Image
​ Perhaps descendants of Acrylic Tony. It is unclear their precise etymology, but appear they have on the screen out of me doing it after work and you observing it perhaps also after work (if before, I hope you have a decent day).  Perhaps noticeable in crowds, the chaps are known to keep themselves firmly to their purpose at times when they are attending to business. Perhaps they are dropping a urine sample off, or seeking some visible confirmation whether it is big bin day or recycling. Or perhaps they are just trying to avoid the football scores so they can get the most out of Match of the Day.  Whatever business they are attending to they attend to it with sightly (must be a word if unsightly is a word) aplomb and furious equanimity, right down to their boot straps.  Don’t you just know it.  Now if you must, approach the chaps, but know the chaps are not always so amenable to unsolicited approaches. In fact, they have been known to lash out and smash your camera ...

The Acrylic Dan and Fam

Image
​ So you may appear before me, and state it plainly, that you know nothing of the Dan and Fam. But must explain and with no delay. There is the Boston Terrier baby, and the Naomi also. Dan I met at the college. He was smoking Regal King Size, and two years older than us. I was buying packs of safety matches and lighting them walking about. They were ten pence from the garage. Then I was buying the Royals King Size and only once did I buy a pack of Swan Vestas to light them with, on account of the taste of the matches when puffing them.  Anyway, Dan was capable of purchasing the cheap white wine in Threahers, or in Wine Rack, and we went past the Uppercrust sandwich shop, down by the river, over the Scarborough bridge and to the bench on a Monday after college to drink it. Later he did other business and I wandered around myself doing some imitations of Johnny Thunders and others like him.  One day I must have walked into a place and he was laying the boogie in his own way in h...

George Best in the Bath

Image
​ There is a famous picture of George Best in the bath. This is not that picture, on account of this picture was painted on the step ladder in the garage. Doing this does not produce no famous picture, though it does produce a painting. George best in the bath is a beautiful thing. He has so much before him. And there is yet to be much belly or jowl on the horizon of his champagne tower in the nightclub.  No he is simply washing off the dirt of the game and glancing at the camera after the camera wielder has attracted his attention with the simple phrase, ‘Hey George, fancy a capstan with that bath time?’