Land of Diskgrinder

Coming up for air out of the claustrophobic arctic diary I just did there. I miss Fusel, but Bêbe's still alive. Wait until next imaginary travel , where me and Bêbe take silver riveted aeroplanes to the dark grit of lush-jungle Toswania, with Fusel's heart in a jar, where we might resurrect him.

Beraubtes got smaller as she went on, and found another hole that she crawled into: we heard a splash somewhere further down and not one of us would follow. Ginger died trying to gouge out the one glowing eye in the fifty foot high iron Fuhrer we found half submerged in oil. Later, guns spent, we (me and Bêbe) came out of a long tunnel to find ourselves looking down on a lot of dead people and smashed tanks. There had been some battle, and in between the bits of human scattered about were slightly moving machines. We walked down the slope, stopping once to do a thing that needed doing, and found the carriage. Vodka hag was still there and welcomed us with tea in the candle-light. We waited there until another road train arrived and then took us away. (no questions answered) That's it.

Miskatonic for the troops. Now do you see, with that literary littoral behind me, I'm not so impressed by the lights (in a viscera sense).

Sometime later, in the dim cold and orange glow, we were hiding in a wide lead-lined alcove set off the floor. We'd been running until we couldn't hear the metallic scraping of the rats behind us, then just stumbling on. We'd stopped for a minute, too exhausted to continue, when Beraubtes pointed to the dark hole half a man's height up the wall. So we climbed in. It went back a few yards, housing a mass of complicated pipes and dials in the back. There was enough room for us to get right in and hide. Beraubtes crawled as far under the machinery as she could, and curled up shivering. Ginger sat down with a little huff, fished his little book out, and started flicking through the pages. I squatted. Bêbe slumped against the wall. Bêbe was the first to speak; she said quietly, not looking at anyone, like she was talking to herself, "Why did you kill the Albonian, sir?" Ginger looked straight at me, "Because the lowland coward asked me to." That was...

Erschroken ran away and Mocz followed him, and we found them both later, cut in half and various essential bits missing.

You may get ices and popcorn

"What?" "Ticking." "No, cloth you put pillow in make no noise." "Very funny. No, twat, ticking , you know, clocks and shit."

All this scuttling around in arctic circle Nazi labyrinths, like an NPC from Castle fucking Wolfenstein. It's not fear, it's fucking exasperation. I could be in the sunshine somewhere on a sea-side packed with fat bastards reading Dan fucking Brown's latest grammar catastrophe (got a good plot, mind, if you like shit). Instead, I'm in the dark, in the cold, following a ginger psychopath through damp corridors with sweaty communist Erschroken (who has swallowed enough of his fear to get inappropriately avuncular with Berbautes), Mocz, the teenager with a big gun; and my hysterical valentine, Bêbe. Holiday fun time.

"Is what your gun is for," said Ginger, "you think you see something move you shoot it fucking quick." "Rats?" asked Erschrocken, "There can't be rats up here, there's nothing to eat." "These rats are mainly clockworks, don't need to eat so much for many years." answered Ginger. "Eat your shitting face off if you not careful, though. Keep them going another many years with fat communist inside them, ay?"

We passed so many things I don't want to see again, with Ginger keeping up a tour-guide commentary in his peculiar idiom. First it was the containment cells, with doors hanging off and the remains of things inside. Things half machine, half human, by the bones and gears mixed together. Shattered glass and dried something spilt on the floor. Bullet-holed skulls with nails sunk in and metal plates attached, wrapped with copper coils in rotting insulation. "These are the failures, kept for experiments and observation," said Ginger, "they were made mindless by what was done to them, but they had reactions that could be measured, so the Nazi alchemists kept them. "They lived here, locked in these little rooms with numbers on the door. Until we found them, and shoot them in their heads." Then, a hall with rusting giants hanging massive in the vaults. I felt their oppressive weight above me, and hunched my shoulders as we walked below. "Things like thes...

What did Ginger say to Fusel that made him sit back and shut up? What did I say to Fusel, and he to me, that I can't remember, even now, when he's gone? Why was I thinking about all of this as we, the happy band of comrades, went in to Gethsemet? I don't know. And it smelt of rotten peaches inside the gatehouse. Although I think this may have been synaesthesia brought on by the sickly orange glow.

The other passengers filed down to the soldiers waiting below and matter-of-factly handed in their guns to one who had produced an oily bag. I heard some murmured conversation as they went (and even a half-stifled giggle from one of the younger women). Ginger spat on the ground and said to himself, "chance gone for them, I think they happy with that." But he said it in English, so therefore being for the benefit of Mr Kite (me, if you don't get that allusion). Beraubtes and Erschrocken were standing together, Beraubtes holding on, crying, Erschrocken, with arm around her. Mocz was looking sick, and Bêbe was lighting a cigarette with shaking hands. I was standing there like a long streak of piss (or a lemon, something yellow and surplus anyway). Ginger smiled suddenly, and said, in a big voice, "come on then, happy band of comrades! Let's go and make peace."

The gatehouse was big and built into a split in the natural wall that guarded Gethsemet's towers, orange lit, looming behind it. After what looked like an argument with the captain, who with his soldiers was holding back, Ginger limped up to us, the huddled passengers, and pointed at me. "You come," and pointed at Bêbe, "you too sergeant. And boy, you got your gun full?" (this to Mocz). Mocz swallowed and nodded. "Good, you get him," and he pointed at party man (whose name was Erschrocken, who staggered), "and I think, her," with another stab of his hand at a young woman (whose name was Beraubtes, who burst into tears). "We go to meet someone else's maker."

Until we got to the blasted gatehouse, then there's too much to remember. Between Fusel's death and the gatehouse it's just a freeze-frame montage: Mocz pulling me up, looking shame-faced, and muttering something in Svaltish. Ginger kicking Fusel's corpse and saying, "Albonian got good death in second, we get bad death, take an hour or two." Ginger still limping, and me, with Fusel's blood all over me, getting some minor, buried comfort from this. Bêbe holding my hand, but not able to look at me. The soldiers behind us, grim but breathing then, as we climb past rotting machinery and broken masonry.

And I looked round a moment later, and saw Ginger smiling, just lowering his gun. We were half way up, and not going too quick because it was steep, and we really didn't want to get there ahead. Fusel was beside me, my arm in his, and also holding Bêbe by the hand (I wanted to do that, I thought), helping us both. For a moment he stopped and pulled me back, and pulled Bêbe forward, so we were three close together, and me, taller than both, was looking down. He looked at Bêbe, then looked me in the eye, took a breath and opened his mouth to say something or other, and I heard a parsimonious little crack behind us, and blood exploded from his mouth. And he hiccoughed once and I felt his weight suddenly, and Bêbe caught him close, and his eyes went glassy as he slumped, and pulled us both to the ground.

We had guns (shitty little pistols) and we got some martial comfort from that, but still we were herded up the glass, cutting incline. With blank eyed soldiers and Ginger (with sarcastic encouragement) behind us. We climbed. And now we could see where we were going, because it was limned in that vomit-orange glow that seeps out behind the towers of Gethsemet.

In the banked up winter there beside the stopped and silent road train, in the hollow of this glacier track valley. The engineers were up ahead uncoupling the two unplugged tanks. A bunch of soldiers, wearing long felt tunics and with faces smeared with lard against the cold, were stood around, silent, bored and smoking those thin little cotton-tied cigarettes. We were huddled together, not wanting to stray too far from the candle cast light out of the cabin door. Party man, Mocz's pretty bullet girls, another bunch of blurred face passengers who I don't remember now (all dead now), Bêbe, Fusel and me. Ginger was in earnest conversation up ahead with the soldiers' boss (Captain? Corporal? Manager? I'm not a student of military hierarchy), with Mocz in lick-spittle attendance, fawning for the big soldiers with the big guns, who largely ignored him. Mainly waiting then, in the cold which was not as cold as it should be (it was winter within the ice radius) and not as d...

With a splitting headache and Ginger shouting. The train had stopped and it was time to go. Ginger had this big smile on his face, standing at the open door with Mocz and the vodka hag. "One last drink, before we go! Come on!" and he pointed at the party man. "You first comrade, come here and get a shining courage, come with your gun and drink up." The party man hesitated, and looked around for someone, but we all looked down. Mocz took a step forward, and the man fumbled up out of his seat, gun shaking in his hand. He said something pleading in Svalti, but this just made Ginger snigger, and shake his head, "You come here, you drink, you be fine, " and he gestured at the Mensat who filled a glass from her back bottle. She held it out with averted eyes and a little mutter. Fair play to the party man, he took the glass, raised it and said "Spless hin." Which Bêbe translated for me in a whisper - "fuck you." Ginger sniggered again and ...

Where I go past tense. * * *

Can't get my head round this, eyes too full, heart too empty. The wind is whipping us below Gethsemet. And I'm on my knees, hugging him close.

See that East Midlands hinterland (land behind the well known seaward port of Scarborough) vernacular coming out now? One too (three) many vodkas in my face. And I want to fuck Ginger right up (and am rehearsing bullet through the neck scenarios in my mind's eye right now). Little, nasty, fish-stinking fuck that he is. Fusel won't let me though, and has taken my pistol. Also Mocz is standing close by with his big brass automatic shotgun. In addition, Ginger is asleep. I look at Bêbe, I want to be telepathic right now, and let her know it will be ok (the fuck that I know), but also that I want to go somewhere else. Fuck it, I think, "Bêbedos, can you come with me, I want to talk," I say, loud, but not very clear (because I am drunk). "Yes," she says, and I am undone, and fall asleep soon after.

I hesitate to say, but say anyway, mainly to break the breathless silence. Bêbe (who now I love) looks at me, with eyes glistening wet in the candlelight, sniffs and says, "I told you what, I told you what this is. What we are." So I ask, why don't we shoot this fuck, and fuck off home? Ginger says nothing, he's looking enormously self-satisfied right now, even though I've got my gun up and am staring at him with that question just asked. "Because," says Fusel wearily, putting his hand in front of the muzzle, "we all have families, and they," he looks steadily at Ginger, "know where we live."

"So I tell him so he knows, then I can waste him?" asks Ginger. Fusel says nothing. Bêbe has finished pretending to be interested in talking to Mocz, so she's back to us, and appears discomfited that she has to sit next to Ginger now, as Fusel's got me in her seat. I get to get up, but Fusel's still barring me. I make an exasperated face for Bêbe and she sits. "Welcome back, sergeant," says Ginger with a shit-eating grin, "I think you help our foreigner guest with aim?" Now I do want to hit the little fucker, and try to get up again, but Fusel is expecting it, drops his arm quick and grips me just above the knee with some nerve trick, that stiffens me from hip to head, and makes me shut my mouth hard. And squeak. Which is very cool. Ginger snorts appreciatively. He shouts to Mocz, "Boy, more vodkas," making that finger palm snap. Mocz quickly commandeers three shots from the Mensat's latest patrons (none for Bêbe) and hurrie...

That's what they eat. This is the cryptic shit Ginger says to me when I get back to my seat. This irritates me. Tell me what the fuck you're on about, I say, momentarily confident because I'm standing and Ginger is sitting. Fusel nearly sucks his moustache into his oesophagus when I say this - he grabs me and pulls me down into the chair next to him. Ginger looks at me with raised (ginger) eyebrows. "I think you are heading yourself too far." he says. And I notice that Fusel has his arm across me, and at first I think he's trying to stop me getting up to punch the little shit, but then I realise he's protecting me when he says, "he doesn't know, he is not yours to waste."

Bêbe, in a forlorn attempt at misdirection waited for a moment before coming out of the piss cupboard after me, and is now engaging Mocz in stilted (looking my way too much) conversation.

Spent, and trying not to think, I'm holding Bêbe close in an arctic shitter. I'm asking what's this about. And she's not answering, holding me, little in my arms. I just fucked you I point out, you owe me (and I know that's crap, so I don't need telling). She looks up at me and says, "we are dead already, we are sacrifice."

On the road train the convenience is primitive. Out the door behind the stove there's a cupboard with a hole in the floor. Through which hole you can see an axle grinding loudly. This gives me something to aim at. Having finished, and not happy about the freezing wind I turn to go (having been). Bêbe comes right in there, banging my nose on the door as she pushes her way in, heeling the door shut behind her. There's barely enough room for the both of us, and, well, I'm not fully zipped up yet. I have one hand fumbling with my flies, the other on my nose, and I'm all too aware of how close she is, right up against me. "you fuck!" she says, and I'm insulted until she slips her hands down, and then I get the picture. Not romantic.

By the clanking of the tank-tracks up ahead and the hissing of the rubber tyres underneath, I can tell we're moving. Strangely, now we're on our way, the mood has lifted a little. It was the waiting. Vodka hag is doing the rounds with her big black bottle, and she's stoked the stove, so it's warm, and the candles have been replaced. There's conversation, and comparing of guns. Mocz is looking less white, and has regained some of his bravado, giving me a conspiratorial wink now and then, whilst helping the prettier passengers with the ins and outs of bullets. Ginger has stopped reading his little book and is now looking around with bright-eyed interest. He turns to me, and I can smell his rotten teeth as he smiles and asks, "you Mercan?" I say no, I'm from Lemuria, and please, could you tell me what's going on? "This is bad weather," he says. I agree that's it's pretty grim, and I tell him I know it's winter, and that I w...

Funny how the ice and non-movement of the train brings this introspection on. That sound, by the way, is engineers digging out the lead plugs from the gun barrels of our towing tanks, so they can shoot. See how that fills me with confidence. Once that's done, we're off.

Our soldier, whose name (Mocz) I find out later, when it's too late to make a difference, took the bag round the other passengers. Bêbe first: she held out her hand, but Mocz said, "no, you lucky dip." This in English, so for my benefit. Bêbe, with a pissed-off look, put her hand in the bag and pulled out a nasty looking poky penis of a gun - if I knew about guns I'd say it was a Luger, but I don't so I won't. Fusel got a blunt little revolver, and then Mocz was off round the other passengers, who were variously timid or defiant when blindly selecting. I said to to Fusel that I didn't know how to use a gun (it's hot in my hand, and I don't know whether the safety is on or off, or whether it's got a safety). Fusel took a moment, clicking through the chambers of his revolver, and said, "You learn quick, friend, you're a soldier now." Thanks a fucking bunch, I thought, boy-soldier (Mocz) has already let me in on that promotion. ...

It's very quiet. I think something's sinking in and neither Fusel and Bêbe can tell me what the something is now. The passenger we're waiting for came. A short fat man in a brown uniform, he's got ginger whiskers and smells of stale tobacco and fish. He's sitting next to me reading a hand-written journal, sometimes he mutters something as he turns a page, and gives me a sly sideways glance to see if I've noticed. Fusel's staring straight at me and Bêbe can't look up. Neither of them seem to want to catch the eye of my neighbour. I'm getting this backward - it's just that, with him sitting there, uncomfortably close, and Fusel and Bêbe acting so spooked by his presence, I can't think of anything else. There was a thing that happened when he came. We'd been waiting for about an hour, mostly in silence except for the rustle of another traveller shifting in their seat, or the occasional bitten back sob from Bêbe (followed by Fusel either s...

We're still waiting at Gunhome, and we're not allowed off the train. The soldier, now standing at the door, mimed this restriction very effectively using his gun as a prop. He told us we're waiting for passengers, then he said something to Bêbe in Svaltish. So we went back to our seats. I thought it was just me, the westerner, but he wouldn't let any of the other passengers off either. That caused a bit of a stink, one of them (probably a party member) got all pompous and started shouting at the soldier. Didn't work, the soldier just poked him hard in the belly with his gun and told him to sit down - I'm guessing that's what he said, the little guy sat down pretty quick anyway. Since then Bêbe's been looking sick, and has been drinking vodka (each sip with a little grimace). Says the soldier said something to her that she's got to think about. Something about an abandoned monastery up ahead, and one of the passengers we're waiting for. Fusel sa...

Yes, it's a nine hour journey, but we have stops on the way (Bêbe forgot to mention), so I was woken up by a soldier pushing a wedge of paper the thickness of my hand into my face. Fusel shouted something from the other side of the cabin, where he had been arguing with the vodka hag about short measure, and the soldier stopped trying to shove documentation up my nose. We're stopped in the bunker town Gunhome. Gunhome is underground, dug into the walls of the valley and only evidenced by the shot towers looming in sentinel rows on the ridge above. The town is an armoury depot, sitting on top of a lead mine and supplying the local forces with ammunition - lead shot mostly. Which is why I didn't complain too loudly at the soldier, who has this double-barelled automatic shotgun slung low on his shoulder (that there is such a thing as an automatic shotgun was a surprise to me). We're changing tanks. The previous goes back to the border town, and we get two bigger ones (si...

It's shit. Mainly herrings, onions and yak in a sauce that is mostly salty water. Vodka hag came round with a bucket and a ladle whilst we waited. I got a chipped enamel plate, and she heaped the crap out of her bucket in there. Bêbe and Fusel, both with the same shit steaming in plates take spoons from the breast pockets of their (identical) tunics. Fusel asks me why I don't eat, and I tell him because I don't have a spoon and can I use his when he's finished? He goes a bit red in the face, and says, "no! You think I am a gayer?" Bêbe says I can use hers. And she winks when she says it. I don't think the Svalts are pale because the sun up here is shallow, and most of the year hidden behind the Southwall glacier. No, it's because they eat transparent food: see-through fish and onion skins. Other than the purple red of yak sausage (where they get their anger from) there's no colour in their diet, and therefore no emotion.

We're taking the land train from the border town to Shithaus (dark grey government town of Svaltwoond). There's no trains or motorways: the spring thaws and unstable geometry of the glaciers don't allow the luxury of rail or road; so instead we're travelling in an articulated convoy of wide cabins on wheels, pulled by a converted tank. I say converted, but what I mean is that the main gun has been plugged with lead. Bêbe tells us that the tanks pulling the land trains didn't used to be disarmed this way, only since the abortive counter-revolution in the late sixties, when one went straight up the main drag in Shithaus and blew the head off the Slotpin memorial. A little history Slotpin was this hunch-backed yak herder from the plains of Leng who led the resistance against the Nazi occupation. Post war, he went on to become Secretary of the party (mainly by killing everybody else in the central committee). The party you're not invited to, and the one that rule...

Watching the news, listening to Fusel play his harmonium whilst Bêbedos (not his wife, that's Fusel's little joke) plinky-plonks on her sitdown guitarra 1 . Here: 1 fired this post up out of the chronology, sorry.

Forgot to mark the Zeppelin graveyard , sorry, it's around where Fusel's grandad ditched his shot up Nifferpult 109.

After six hours in the customs hut, we're finally in Svaltwoond 1 , a hard land of glaciers and concrete bunker towns inside the radius of the Arctic circle, and my, is it cold. Fusel's still with me as my official liaison - Albonia and Svaltwoond are politically related (one's the client sate of the other, but I don't know which) - and we've picked up a Svalti guide too: a severe woman named Bêbedos Dedos (Fusel calls her Baby, and it winds her up). She's short, with short white blonde hair and a short temper. She's also quite good looking in a terse way. Her accent is as thick as two short planks - her words come out like she's spitting pips into a wind tunnel. I like her. Fusel doesn't. 1 not its real name

About his grandfather, who was a fighter pilot. Seems he was flying low over the Urinals on his way off patrol and late one night. And out of the moon glow at 12 o'clock a fuckker bi-plane shot the crap out of his tail. So he ditched in an oxbow lake in the bitter hills homewards (no parachute you see, and water landing much preferred to rock scratching). Anyway, he wakes up in the gray dim dawn wrapped in felt and lard, a walking stick in his hand and a fucked off wolf a yard away. The story goes on and involves homburg hats and more lard. And he goes on to become this word-renowned artist. So Fusel tells me.

Just realised you're probably reading this upside down (which is yak-to-front timewise), so start here and work to more recent .

day 4 of vacation, and now smoking weasel tobacco in the customs hut I'll get a shot of Fusel next. No sound though.

One thing I didn't tell you was the time, in the bulldog aeroflot, looking out of the glassene bow observation hole, when I saw the dead balloon tracts. We were cycling up over the mountain hump of the Urinals and there was this plateau, full with ice stretched over the hard grey rock, where due to a lucky confluence of orphan thermals and dry winds the abandoned blimps of inter-war transports gather. They built those things to last, filled them with argon and wrapped them with thick, greased leather, so once left to their own devices they floated up the betrayed winds, and ended up jostling in the depression, five points north of anywhere we care about. Dark hulks lifting on errant gales, sometimes grazing the ice-locked valleys, sometimes above the peaks. A hazard to commercial airborne shipping nonetheless. Surviving 70 years lonely later, bullet-riddled by attempts to down them, but still floating in the night time depths.

And am feeling multi-banged up by cargo hold. Me and Fusel (Fusel and I) spent the last ten hours in the dark oil stinking belly of this cold war flying shit-house, with straw bales, chickens and a lashed tower of Samsung microwaves for company. Fusel had his travelling set of chess out. Tiny milled steel or aluminium pawns, knights and bishops; brass or copper rooks, kings and queens; depending on the side you're on. Sharp pin feet stuck in, holes in, alternating oak or padouk squares. He had this Eastern European belief he's better chess-wise than any pasty westerner like me ( Gymnasium of the Mind ) but I have this aptitude, and I gave him a good run for his money (we bet on the outcome of our second after a cagey first). I lost in the end (end-game pawn manouevres, in which I get lost). But he's not so dismissive now: he's younger than me, but he had that weary patronising, and sometimes sanctimonius, way of suffering my enthusiasm; and although that eyeward sk...

We're out (Fusel and me) on the terracotta tiled roof garden this fine morning (cold mist crystal dawn in the cotton of our over-shirts) and looking out over the purple rooftops, across the incised plains to the low hills bent beyond the horizon's curve. I am smoking a cardboard cigarette (a nicotine contraption made of silk thread and rice paper), and I have a thick black coffee in a tiny cup. Fusel's fluting breath into his turbine pipe and holding a plastic disposable lighter, flicked on and off, over the bowl - fighting the early morning dampness, mist and fog, to get it lit. We are standing apart, and not exactly facing (because of drunken information going each way the night before - we both know more about each other than we want to). But I hope there's still a friendship there, and it's just a hangover headache in the way. Plus, last night, I fired off into the East Midlands vernacular, and don't think he understood me. There's an airship just l...

We found a tavern (light spilling on the street from the double doors, oak and strapped with brass) where there was a welcome. After drinking the local cooking beer with Fusel and various men (the women, in layers of cotton and silk, don't come out nightwards), where my shining baldness was subject of much conversation (these guys have big black bushes of hair, or fifteen feet of dusty turban), we've retired to the back room for guests. The electric has gone off (it's past midnight, and the grid is pumping up to the arctic circle and the miners there; no light for us), so we're lantern-lit in this nook. I'll take a minute to describe this place. The floor is stone flagged up to a burning fire where two big dogs lie. The tables are round and thick and the chairs low and upholstered in stretched leather. The ceiling is in shadow. Heads of dead things, imperfectly stuffed, are hung on the walls. There's a short bar with candles on, and golden glints from metal t...

We got here at last, night drawing in, and I'm now blogging this through the wonders of T9 predictive text, standing on a cobbled road in the outskirts of the old quarter. This is Valve Street , and there are electronics shops each side, blinking and flashing from yellow-lit interiors. The shops have no front walls, they're all door, with a token territorial gesture of flaking metal-framed office desks across the front. These invariably piled high with winking and humming gimcrackery. The shop I'm in front of has windows on the second story painted out red with white text, there's a light on behind - making signage. The table of this one is spread with oily cogs, a spaghetti of wiring and humps of things that have the air (or ozone) of Tesla machines. I would buy one, except I don't know what constitutes "one" in the pile - they all share tangled wires and bits of fatherboard (which is red, not blue), copper-soldered together. If I picked that one u...

Well the yak (who I've named Steve) is really wearing my arse out now, but we're just passing the Knuckle. It's this big black volcanic glass rock that's off to one side of the road (a mile off, and still huge) glinting in the evening slanting sunshine. It's called the Knuckle (Shlortsi in the local language, so Fusel tells me) because it looks like this big carpometacarpal joint pushed up out of the stony ground round there. Like a giant is trying to punch her way out of the geology. Nothing grows there (and you have to say that with a mystery whisper) because, hey! it's fucking rock, there's no soil there. (Fusel glowers at this and sucks on his pipe, which I think is full of ketamine, because he's that fucked up with his big-ass moustache). I'm a happy smiling tourist with a big camera, a hunk of technology I can't use, even here - there's a super-secret rocket base behind the Knuckle, and occasionally you see the contrail of an X-pla...

The town's called Pizpot, and was the furthest north Alexander got on his world tour in 333BC. (I'd link that if I could work out how to do it on my phone). It appears he minced up here after sorting out the Gordian Knot (a kind of pre-christian Rubic's cube) and took a short holiday before going back south to die of dysentery. There's a spa in the centre of Pizpot that has Alexander's footprint preserved in plaster as a centre-peice. It's exactly a foot long - and is where we get that measure from. By the same token, a yard is a measure of three Greeks standing really close together.

On a yak. We (me and Fusel, my guide and card-carrying Comintern apparatchik) are on the road across the grain bowl of Albonia. The bowl is flat as a flat thing and stretches out on every side to distant hills poking up a long way away. It's wet too. Wet in the sky, wet on the road, and wet on my yak. What's that thing? "You can see so far you can see your dog run away for three days". Well maybe two days here with that dog measure, or maybe a yak metric in these parts. For a couple of hours now we can see the smoke of the town we're heading for (there's some big fuck-off brown coal power station there apparently, fed by strip mines we can't see) and the smoke goes up like a solid tower of global warming, a right angle of pollution dividing one half sky from the other half sky. Fusel says it's a portent of the glorious something or other. I'm not allowed to photograph it.

Blogging from Albonia 1 , first stop on the grand tour of my holiday. This off my phone. Very difficult. Like this has taken about 20 minutes to write. So not much from here, then. Everywhere in Albonia is nearly underwater because of the inclement weather. Wading not walking. Laters. 1 Not its real name, and not the one I gave it first.

Before off on the holiday (long time coming, short time going). Anyway, before I bugger off. I found this from Bertrand Russell: Fear of public opinion, like every other form of fear, is oppressive and stunts growth. It is difficult to achieve any kind of greatness while a fear of this kind remains strong, and it is impossible to acquire that freedom of spirit in which true happiness consists, for it is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not from the accidental tastes and desires of those who happen to be our neighbours, or even our relations That's good.

See you in October

Now to sleep, perching bream

In the stocks and shares of the internal market of your head, my understanding is weak, I'll blow candles out and breathe in the smoke, Say random words, and push them into a series of sentences, Completely meaningless, but contiguous nonetheless, They resemble sense, and follow naturally, from one to the other, Until they make a paragraph.

I'm a misanthrope, not a misogynist, and I don't mean you any harm, the list of my inadequacies is long but stops before wilful hurt. I'll stay calm, apply the balm of my solution to your disease. Whilst worthy in my absolute hatred of all things half-done, half-hearted and empty, I'll stay true to the bitter morality I built in my head, and pay those fees. Or something like that. Maybe with less internal rhyme.

From another contributor, this is the American equivalent of false to materials architecture: Made me think of the idea of 'ranch style' houses. What was intended by the original designers was a home in which the outdoors and the indoors are not so seperated. I think I spelled that incorrectly. I shall soldier on. So, you move seamlessly from indoors to outdoors without having to go downstairs. From that original idea, we ended up with millions of cheap tract houses with no upstairs. Many if not most of them opening up (with sliding glass doors at the back) to pretty much nothing. A grass field about the size of a postage stamp, neatly missing the mark set by the idea-people by about a jillion miles. And they are absolutely EVERYWHERE, like some kind of a plague.

Only had to edit one slightly embarrassing thing out from last night's ramblings (there was a line that was a bit too informative). That's good going. Usually I have to correct grammar (because she can't spell).

I'm 42 (which is a good age for answers to the question ) and I am very pleased that, due to serious illness in March past , I am super slim and full of vim and vigour. Go figure what that's all about. I need to, and want to, find a replacement intelligence, that supersedes (and intercedes with, in arguments I can not win) everyone I have ever met. Someone muscular in intellect and viscera, someone whole and right. Someone fair and happy to smile on any other hour. That will be enough, there's closure there.

five seconds of truth, gone

With good friends who chip in occasionally (imagine, I'm thinking of you) the starting point and main point of this blog is lost. See, I'm a technical director for a large advertising agency and my job is partly to understand the trends and tropes of the interweb (the other part is to swear fulsomely and creatively at people less prima-donna than me), so I know exactly how unread blogs actually are. The 95% percent rule applies - Most blogs are shit Of the blogs that are not shit, most of the posts therein are shit Of the posts that are not shit, in the blogs that are not shit, most of the content is shit Of the content that is not shit, in the posts that are not shit, in the blogs that are not shit, most of the words are shit And so on, until you achieve the granularity of lexicography and you are assigning 95% of the alphabet to the category "shit" (is "a" more shit than "f"?). So when I started writing this blog I had the happy realis...

Plus photoshop filter, and eye-high-lighting, makes for vanity publishing. Yours for the price of a slack cigarette Have at it phrenologists, the topology of my skull brooks no tiny patch algebra .

Going to shave off all my hair tonight. Down to the nub of skull. Because that's attractive. I have for many years, since I started losing hairs (one by bunch) flirted with the skinhead look (and even when I had the full head of sprouting weeds). As I have lost a deal of weight in the past two months (due to indian illness ) slim-lining with a lack of head-hedge will suit. I'll post a photograph through the loveliness of photobooth when I'm done. You know, because that's some kind of entertainment and a record for me in later years (happen this post doesn't succumb to pixel-rot).

Even though I'm an atheist (though I prefer the term afairiest, as I don't believe in fairies as much as I don't believe in magic-man-in-the-sky) I am extremely superstitious. Apparently we have this spiritual gland that's buried deep in the grey pudding in our skulls - a little illuminator that lights up the corners in our heads. Mine is atrophied, but like an appendix (another evolutionary cul-de-sac, punctuating the colon) it occasionally shoots some bitter issue into my digestive tract, and I have to eat my words. So I have an abhorrence of pavement(sidewalk)-spanning ladders and black cats, and deeply, deeply believe in karmic retribution (although I think that's a network effect - what goes around comes around: you put shit into the world machine eventually the cogs will churn you up). That's it, and that's the end: shit in; shit out. Live your life with less than brio and half-burned, you'll get a lacklustre and tepid experience in return. T...

Like a dying battery that arcs occasionally, the smell of ozone cracking in the air "The delta wave has started building - how long does it need" I think I'm going to go to the poetry slam upcoming. Although it sounds like the usual dreary twats will be in attendance, still I think I may enjoy it. Here's a quote from the site: Slamming is competitive poetry; where poets perform their work and the audience decide by their applause which poets are best. Sounds engaging. Any suggestions as to what I should perform? Perhaps this (I like it). Or maybe I'll crash?

With cellulose X-rays. I've noticed recently that my posts are degenerating into little more than tweets; thin dough leavened with the occasional yeast of dirty music I have banged together with music hammers in Garageband . I have an oldest and dearest friend, with finely tuned sensibilities, and a horror of amateur musical twiddlage, who would be disgusted by my attempts at harmonious hoo-har . But I get pleasure out of it, in the same way I get pleasure out of doing bad DIY. I have built my house over a number of years: heavily over-engineered; brutalist with ogees ; Le Corbusier in frills. I did architecture for a moment in the early eighties, at Oxford Polytechnic (now Oxford Brookes University, because the word polytechnic got associated with sixties socialism and, well, brutalist architecture, and that's not good marketing). There's a thought: socialist marketing; there'd be top billboard campaigns . I have a kind of affection for all that nasty concrete...

Oh no, Apple have put together the sleekest most lovely computer I have ever seen. I want one, and I'm so fighting my natural hunter-gatherer instinct to go out with my hunting spear and gathering trousers and pocket me one of they iMacs. Damn and blast.

Second smallest boy

Industrial tweeting. The money's gone.

wish I hadn't.

Well work-wise anyway. Now onwards to this developer conference thing at the WS.

The sun is up, out and glowering over the muddled Bristol rooftops. Seagulls are arguing about politics in the gables. People are squinting (but mainly with smiling). I can hear the engines starting up, at last. July was crap, mind.

Anyone looking for a top Mac blogging tool (an intertube spade, or web pliers) should look no further than Marsedit , because there's nothing worth looking at past it. In fact, its lissom silhouette obscures feature-bloated competitors waving and bobbing for attention in its shadow. You have to know a bit of HTML (happy tamarind monkey lingo), it's not WYSIWYG (what you suck is what you giblets), to get the fullest extent of its powers (annealing, coffee-making, empathy and grade three piano). Me, being an OCD geek, have studied its mechanics. With its happy help I wield my blog spanner with aplomb. Cheers, ta, red sweater.

No really. You may recognise this expression from that one unexpected (and unwelcome) encounter after so long in the silence. Not intended. You looked sick. Sorry.

Some musical nastiness... And another...

I know this makes no sense, but it's a nice juxtaposition of wordy-happenstance. biff |bif| informal verb [ trans. ] strike (someone) roughly or sharply, usually with the fist : he biffed me on the nose. Plantagenet |planˈtajənit| adjective of or relating to the English royal dynasty that held the throne from the accession of Henry II in 1154 until the death of Richard III in 1485.

We English people say "arse" to rhyme with farce. And to us, "ass" (rhymes with mass) is another word for donkey, so it doesn't sound right to say "shove it up your donkey," or "Jesus rode into Damascus on his ass". I have a theory that American swearing is a lot harsher than English swearing (and differs from Glaswegian swearing in the same way). Americans appear to have no equivalent of "bugger" (which can be affectionate), "twat" (which is dismissive) and "bollocks" (which is a gentler way of saying "bullshit"). American swearing seems so much more venomous and nasty - "cocksucker" and the "mother-****er" concatenation (even I can't write that one full, it is deeply nasty) are super-aggressive. Also we tend to find the word "fuck" a lot funnier than they seem to. For instance, I can say "fuck off" with a smile, meant to mean "you're hav...