I painted this tree I like, but I didn't like it so I painted some punks over it, and a reworking of From Russia With Love called 'The Alternative to Letting the Baddie Open the Case'

I painted this tree. This tree is significant to me. When I was a lad I went to join the local football team. I didn’t live in New Earswick, but my Grandparents did. My Granddad walked me down. They were practicing under this tree. I walked towards them.

It was a twat to paint this tree. I couldn’t get the light right. I give up and went to work. I came home and painted over it. This is it before I painted over it.

When I was on the field recently, a man on a lawnmower drove it over to us and asked if he could help me. I said I was alright ta, but I could tell by the way he used his walk (sat on his lawnmower) that this wasn’t what he meant really.

He meant: ‘What are you doing on this playing field? I only opened the gates to the car park because I had to get the lawn mower in.’

So I explained to him about walking my Granddad’s dog here when I was a kid and that I am sentimental about this playing field and love to stand on it and look at the sky, and that I smile, involuntarily, immediately when I step on the grass of it..

He looked at us funny, and then he said he had been here for four years.

It felt like complete bollocks when he said it, which I guess is the feeling you get when someone comes along 20 years after your childhood and says that the site of it is theirs now and what are you doing in it without permission.

I tried to make further conversation and brought up the kids who drink on the field at night and smash glass all over the rugby pitch, which resulted in the fence and gate to stop them doing it. It tickled his fancy for a bit, but not much.

Later I came home and painted this picture over the tree for a mate of mine. I had tried to paint on it A3 a few times, with little success, but I managed a bit better on A2.  

Want some more?

Here is a bit of a reworking of From Russia With Love called ‘The Alternative to Letting the Baddie Open the Case.’

Context: when I was a kid, ITV put all the Bond films on around April time. I remember watching them with my Dad and it was light outside. I sort of expected that life would be a lot of wandering around in a suit, running away from henchmen and sorting things out in a spectacular manner. I thought my life would be like that bit in You Only Live Twice where he is running away from the baddies on the top of the roof and the anthemic music is playing. A bit like how the footballers must feel when they are running to the corner flag to boot the corner flag, to beat their chest and get a good clap off the fans who likely have the App to get their tickets? Maybe it doesn't work like this...

I’d just got on the train with the Russian lass and the briefcase. We were pinching the decoding machine and it all centered around how she she fancied us, but did she really? Perhaps she was just working for the Russians. Is there a dining car on this train? Look at these bunk beds. This is well spenny.

After a nice cuddle, I nipped down the dining car for a Fruit Shoot and a look out of a different window. Everyone was talking in hushed tones and the train sounded lovely. I could stay here forever, I thought. But I decided this wouldn't be very interesting. So I went back down the compartment and the suitcase was on the side with the talcum powder in it that when I opened it the talcum powder would explode tear gas and I would then attack the baddie.

Only thing was, I hadn’t seen him yet, and I was itching to have a go.

The Russian lass looked at us.

'I'm bored, pet. Been on this train for donkeys.'

She shrugged. I picked up the case and set it on the bed. I repeated the quotation from the film.

‘Open the catches like so will release the cartridge.'

Which it did.

...

The bloke in the little hat who kicked me off at Trieste, he was no happy. But I told him, I said it is as it is, ‘I am sorry, but I am not sorry. I am an agent of the British Government. I am used to excitement whether I travel. Is there is not some, I will explode the talcum powder, you know this.'

As the train pulled away, I pulled up my socks and trousers (my belt with 50 gold sovereigns in it having disappeared) and went looking for a local farmhouse to have a bed for the night if poss, and if not, a loaf of bread? Some brandy? A kip in your barn?

The barn was possible. But I didn’t like the look of it so much. ‘What about the sofa?’ I said to the farmer. ‘Or better still, your bed.’

The farmer looked at the gun I was proffering.

‘Well, well, monsiuer. You are clearly packing heat.’

‘Bloody too right, I am,’ I said. ‘So how about it? You sleep in the barn and I sleep in your bed.’

‘I’ll take the sofa,’ he said, and there wasn’t much more of interest that happened that night.

…

The next morning, I was slapping his aftershave all over my face and I had some quite terrible wind in his en-suite.

‘Sorry about that, old chap,’ I said as I came down for breakfast.

But there was no breakfast.

‘What the...?!’

The farmer just continued to sit there doing the crossword; he didn't stand up or nothing. ‘I don’t do breakfast usually,’ he said, like it was nothing.

‘You don’t do breakfast? It’s the most important meal of the day. What about balancing your blood sugar? Bloody hell mate, you don’t want diabetes. I’ve seen the machines they rig you up to in hospital. They look shit and you’re on them for four hours. Yes, they’ve got TV’s, but you can’t even hear them.’

‘I’m just not hungry first thing in a morning,’ he said.

I kicked off for a bit more, and then I went into the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. There wasn’t much to put in it but a slice of ham and some cheese and half a tin of mackerel out of the fridge and some french mustard and some spinach. But I made do, made it up and went out the front of the cottage.

I ate it watching the sun rise majestically over the hillside. It may have actually been that the sun majestically rose over the hillside, but you get the impression.

I was just finishing the last mouthful when a helicopter started to appear out of the distance.

‘Bloody hell,’ I said, and took off running in my suit.

When I had finished running, I was knackered. I checked my stats. They were great. I had run really far. But the helicopter was still after us. 'Fuck sake,' I said, dabbing my brow with my tie.

I ran some more.

Some people were out training for a triathlon and I ran past them.

‘No hard feelings,’ I said, ‘it’s just there’s a helicopter after us.’

A little while later I was on a boat in a rather nice hat firing flares at some oil drums.

It was a decent holiday, but a little too touristy for me in parts.