Trickster Chappy
The august sun barks
and my nose carries a drop
of American mustard
preparing itself for winter
・ the nights are drawing in.
Professional yomping street legs
skirt around beggarly obstacles
as if on auto-cue.
By the Brighton Dome,
New Road
cosseted, comfortable gaggles of tourists
flick maps open and ponder, babble-lipped,
then notice
the shell suited and grizzled human statue
who stands
lager lop-sided,
grimace grinned,
roll up snagged fist on hip,
other hand
pointing at gun shoot angle
away from the sun and the shadow
cast in replica upon him
from the Max Miller statue.
He's a trickster cheeky chappy
But only I get the joke
“it's all clever stuff, no rubbish!”
his mute performance smiles.
Dan Belton 2010
Wednesday 4 August 2010
Wednesday 28 July 2010
the Strangehold of the Printmakers.
Today I was lucky enough to take up my invitation to visit the house of Mr William Randell, who amongst other things was a dust jacket artist for the Collins Crime Club. He provided covers for such thriller authors such as Miles Burton, Carol Carnac, DM Devine, and many others whose names for me are unknowns, but certainly seemed to be providing death-a-plenty back in the fifties. One more familiar name crops up - he did the first 4 jackets, and more for then promising up and comer Ruth Rendell.
Mr Randell has been a regular reader at the library for as long as I've been working there, but it was only a recent chance conversation with him about Walter Mosley novels that bought to light his career and also his skills as a wood engraver, and also his wife's as a lino printer and teacher.
Today they were kind enough to show me their home and work, with Bill's wife (sorry, in all the excitement I didn't quite hear if it was Jenny or Ginny) particularly expressing an interest in my attempts at lino work and offering advice and also showed much of the excellent work by her former students and even better, her own.
So much to learn tho, much of which about the quality of tools, ink, paper etc. She even went as far as to lend me 3 of her tools, her favourite ones, so I rather wish she hadn't. "Be very careful when you sharpen them" she decreed. Sharpen? The only time I tried sharpening a tool it ended up about half an inch shorter and not one jot sharper. I think I'll just try hers out, then look at getting some more of my own.
Bill has also offered to help me out with wood engraving, if I wish to learn, but I think I'll be sticking to the lino for the time being. The engravings he showed me were so small and fine that I would balk mildly at even drawing that small!
So many, many thanks to Mr & Mrs Randell - it's rare you get the chance to be taken under the wing for a couple of hours by people who are really steeped in what in many ways is a dying art.
Images were obtained from : http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/randell.htm
and haphazardly slung around the page like a total amatuer, by me.
Tuesday 27 July 2010
The Invisible Girlfriend
Well that'll teach me - I like millions of shiftless yet restless folk have started a blog, and now thanks to the 3 people I've got following it (thanks, thanks, I mean that - see you in hell) I now have to continue to bare what part of my soul hasn't been sold down the River Styx. Worse, I feel, egad, that I have to amuse, educate or at least open myself open to heartless ridicule without leaping into the tear smeared puddle of self pity that laps at the soles of my old MBT's that are going as bald as my head. How's that?
The soundtrack is, appropriately NO MEANS NO and last night I found myself actually buying and eating ice cream. £4.50 a pot (Strawberry cheesecake), which is £1.50 more than the dago red (apologies but I'm an advocate of John Fante). This meant I couldn't buy more cigars even though I keep saying I won't buy more cigars. So no matter how tasty & creamy said pot was, I say was as it was so bloody hard my spoon did a Uri Geller trying to get a sample to my mouth, I still don't get ice-cream. Which is still in the freezer. A shame as it's supposed to be balm for the troubled soul and if I would have eaten more of it maybe I wouldn't have drank another half bottle of wine and spun into bed at 8pm only to be woken at 3 a.m. be well meaning folk offering me gifts of wine and cigars. These I metaphorically shook my first at while the other hand grabbed the blue plastic bag of loot and I tottered off back to bed cursing these night demons, only to mildly chastise myself for unwarranted grumpiness as the bedside clock informed me that in truth it was only 9.15 post meridian and I'd only dreamt I was in such a deep sleep that it was the wee hours of the morning.
Do i digress?
Why the wine and even ice cream? We shall play the gentleman and say a slight romantic hiccup had led to me believe I should be a tad maudlin, tho I don't even believe I was, and leave it at that. Misled men tell no tales.
It is true tho that I do find romance a problematic little beast that has a set of teeth at each end that also function as bum-holes so one gets bit and then shat on in unison.
Take a little tale that happened 18 or 19 years ago when I lived in a shared house opposite a bread factory which had an atomosphere so uniquely and ambiently noisy that on the day the factory took a day off from spewing out those rubber packaged white sheets that supermarkets term 'loafs', the ensuing silence was so unusual it was like the world had ended until one's ears twigged what on earth had happened.
Anyway I lived in the shared house with some maggots that infested the kitchen waste bin, a dead bat in the understairs cupboard, a trainspotter of a man so boring that eveyone would flee the TV lounge as soon as his Burberry slippers crept over the threshold, a city guy who played, or in fine tradition merely owned a banjo and wouls re-roll the stubs of cigars in newspaper. Also an indian girl who over time got more and more disturbed that eventually, when her tape player broke and started to play the ever, ever present 'Best of Areosmith' tape on double speed she didn't even notice. She was the only one. Me? I was a paragon of virtue, drank Becks by the case, wrote lots of bad poetry (and one book, mind) and pretended I was, of course, Charles Bukowkski.
And then I did something very bad.
Drunken, desperate, girlfriendless, drunken, I prowled the carbon dioxide streets of West Croydon, found the shabbiest off-licence cum corner shop I could (and oh! the choice!). Toeing open the wired up door, as attractive as a teenager's teeth I stepped inside and spent hazy, courage gathering minutes in front of the magazine shelves, until after minutes of trepidation my sleazy hand snaked out, and before you know it, I had spat my coins upon the counter top and snaked out of the shop with my loot. A copy of 'Loot'.
For those of you not in the know 'Loot' is a buy/sell magazine, the London particular version of Exchange & Mart, and pink, like the FT, so assumedly only suicidal bankers sell stuff in there.
But the dreadful thing...They also have a Lonely Hearts column, and gripping Becks in right hand and biro in left I filled in my humbling request. Took a long time finding the right words, the right balance of eagerness, humility, sexiness (ha!) and forthrightness. And all this in about 26 words. And then I did it all again, as they insisted it had to be in black ink.
In the mists of time I have forgotten exactly what I wrote, but the essence of this overlong amble is 2 weeks later a reply flopped upon the doormat, gasping and pursing it's envelope flap.
Well, the awful truth, the long and short of it - it was a rejection. It's one thing sending off bad poetry to small magazines and having them flung back at you, as they are of course weevil brained ignoramuses who will never understand your fledging yet towering talents. But to be rejected by the Lonely Hearts. Spit on me why don't you from the Editor down to the lowliest coffee vending machine filler.
And why? It seems my passage mentioning 'a girl to kick his arse', meaning obviously a girl to encourage me out of my rut, and enthuse me and make me at last hear showtunes and understand the simple majesty of the sunrise and all that, well, it has been slightly misinterpreted in the way that puts me in a leather dungeon with some vicious horror blowing on my balls with the 'dead hot' setting of a Braun hair-dryer.
Yes. I've always found romance a little problematic.
The soundtrack is, appropriately NO MEANS NO and last night I found myself actually buying and eating ice cream. £4.50 a pot (Strawberry cheesecake), which is £1.50 more than the dago red (apologies but I'm an advocate of John Fante). This meant I couldn't buy more cigars even though I keep saying I won't buy more cigars. So no matter how tasty & creamy said pot was, I say was as it was so bloody hard my spoon did a Uri Geller trying to get a sample to my mouth, I still don't get ice-cream. Which is still in the freezer. A shame as it's supposed to be balm for the troubled soul and if I would have eaten more of it maybe I wouldn't have drank another half bottle of wine and spun into bed at 8pm only to be woken at 3 a.m. be well meaning folk offering me gifts of wine and cigars. These I metaphorically shook my first at while the other hand grabbed the blue plastic bag of loot and I tottered off back to bed cursing these night demons, only to mildly chastise myself for unwarranted grumpiness as the bedside clock informed me that in truth it was only 9.15 post meridian and I'd only dreamt I was in such a deep sleep that it was the wee hours of the morning.
Do i digress?
Why the wine and even ice cream? We shall play the gentleman and say a slight romantic hiccup had led to me believe I should be a tad maudlin, tho I don't even believe I was, and leave it at that. Misled men tell no tales.
It is true tho that I do find romance a problematic little beast that has a set of teeth at each end that also function as bum-holes so one gets bit and then shat on in unison.
Take a little tale that happened 18 or 19 years ago when I lived in a shared house opposite a bread factory which had an atomosphere so uniquely and ambiently noisy that on the day the factory took a day off from spewing out those rubber packaged white sheets that supermarkets term 'loafs', the ensuing silence was so unusual it was like the world had ended until one's ears twigged what on earth had happened.
Anyway I lived in the shared house with some maggots that infested the kitchen waste bin, a dead bat in the understairs cupboard, a trainspotter of a man so boring that eveyone would flee the TV lounge as soon as his Burberry slippers crept over the threshold, a city guy who played, or in fine tradition merely owned a banjo and wouls re-roll the stubs of cigars in newspaper. Also an indian girl who over time got more and more disturbed that eventually, when her tape player broke and started to play the ever, ever present 'Best of Areosmith' tape on double speed she didn't even notice. She was the only one. Me? I was a paragon of virtue, drank Becks by the case, wrote lots of bad poetry (and one book, mind) and pretended I was, of course, Charles Bukowkski.
And then I did something very bad.
Drunken, desperate, girlfriendless, drunken, I prowled the carbon dioxide streets of West Croydon, found the shabbiest off-licence cum corner shop I could (and oh! the choice!). Toeing open the wired up door, as attractive as a teenager's teeth I stepped inside and spent hazy, courage gathering minutes in front of the magazine shelves, until after minutes of trepidation my sleazy hand snaked out, and before you know it, I had spat my coins upon the counter top and snaked out of the shop with my loot. A copy of 'Loot'.
For those of you not in the know 'Loot' is a buy/sell magazine, the London particular version of Exchange & Mart, and pink, like the FT, so assumedly only suicidal bankers sell stuff in there.
But the dreadful thing...They also have a Lonely Hearts column, and gripping Becks in right hand and biro in left I filled in my humbling request. Took a long time finding the right words, the right balance of eagerness, humility, sexiness (ha!) and forthrightness. And all this in about 26 words. And then I did it all again, as they insisted it had to be in black ink.
In the mists of time I have forgotten exactly what I wrote, but the essence of this overlong amble is 2 weeks later a reply flopped upon the doormat, gasping and pursing it's envelope flap.
Well, the awful truth, the long and short of it - it was a rejection. It's one thing sending off bad poetry to small magazines and having them flung back at you, as they are of course weevil brained ignoramuses who will never understand your fledging yet towering talents. But to be rejected by the Lonely Hearts. Spit on me why don't you from the Editor down to the lowliest coffee vending machine filler.
And why? It seems my passage mentioning 'a girl to kick his arse', meaning obviously a girl to encourage me out of my rut, and enthuse me and make me at last hear showtunes and understand the simple majesty of the sunrise and all that, well, it has been slightly misinterpreted in the way that puts me in a leather dungeon with some vicious horror blowing on my balls with the 'dead hot' setting of a Braun hair-dryer.
Yes. I've always found romance a little problematic.
Saturday 24 July 2010
Attack of the Fifty New Women
If I have one more glass of wine I shall be using my face to de-glaze the pan for my Canard Roti aux epices or whatever the hell it is; late guests and the oven chips (proper home made ones) are starting to look like witches teeth.
In the mean time the home-made washing line, let alone every available surface is bedecked with prints of so-called fetish women (I'm as fetish as rice pudding), sailors, flying cocks and Japanese girls with foot dildos.
In the corner, ready to embalm paintings which are due to be posted to Sylt, Germany, is a huge roll of bubble wrap which I cunningly carried from work by wrapping it around a poster tube.
It looks like a tampon for the 50 Foot Woman.
No wonder she looks so angry in the poster.
In the mean time the home-made washing line, let alone every available surface is bedecked with prints of so-called fetish women (I'm as fetish as rice pudding), sailors, flying cocks and Japanese girls with foot dildos.
In the corner, ready to embalm paintings which are due to be posted to Sylt, Germany, is a huge roll of bubble wrap which I cunningly carried from work by wrapping it around a poster tube.
It looks like a tampon for the 50 Foot Woman.
No wonder she looks so angry in the poster.
Stiff Necked
Another sign of progress occurs to me, or at the least of cultural mores and habits.
Whilst the poor old Victorians, in the advent of photography had to be strapped into devices that from behind resembled Death Row's Old Sparky, with bits and braces to keep their necks rigid and spines taught, and no doubt laced by the photographer's assistant with enough laudanum to stop Isambard Kingdom Brunel from messing with meccano, in case the otherwise resulting 'camera wobble' caused them to resemble a knee's up at St-Vitus dance with poker faced grimaces that stretched the entire width of the plate (and this from folk who would photograph their recently dead kin also) - we shall be seen in entirely different light.
That's it, and I shall christen it 'the lonely facebook quarter turn hump'. In years to come our progeny, who I'm sure shall still not be whizzing about in Jetson type flying cars, for they shall have been surely irradiated by global warming and the chance of a half decent day of sun worship getting piles on the pebbles of Brighton beach, shall look up (those 2 headed burnt faced survivors of mankind's folly) on another trend, fondly, warmly, or puzzling?
Puzzling over this shrug, the self-portrait flagrante which shows a welcoming face, but off-turned shoulder as one's aged relative must have waddled over a Red Bull and Tuaca Frappe and in a moment of inspiration thought 'Heavens, the tip of my sulking chin looks fabulous tonight, especially in these Crocs' and flash-bang-wallop, another self-portrait and a shoulder complaint is born.
Chiroprator's shall rule the world.
I've immediately discovered the point of my blog - to teach myself punctuation.
Whilst the poor old Victorians, in the advent of photography had to be strapped into devices that from behind resembled Death Row's Old Sparky, with bits and braces to keep their necks rigid and spines taught, and no doubt laced by the photographer's assistant with enough laudanum to stop Isambard Kingdom Brunel from messing with meccano, in case the otherwise resulting 'camera wobble' caused them to resemble a knee's up at St-Vitus dance with poker faced grimaces that stretched the entire width of the plate (and this from folk who would photograph their recently dead kin also) - we shall be seen in entirely different light.
That's it, and I shall christen it 'the lonely facebook quarter turn hump'. In years to come our progeny, who I'm sure shall still not be whizzing about in Jetson type flying cars, for they shall have been surely irradiated by global warming and the chance of a half decent day of sun worship getting piles on the pebbles of Brighton beach, shall look up (those 2 headed burnt faced survivors of mankind's folly) on another trend, fondly, warmly, or puzzling?
Puzzling over this shrug, the self-portrait flagrante which shows a welcoming face, but off-turned shoulder as one's aged relative must have waddled over a Red Bull and Tuaca Frappe and in a moment of inspiration thought 'Heavens, the tip of my sulking chin looks fabulous tonight, especially in these Crocs' and flash-bang-wallop, another self-portrait and a shoulder complaint is born.
Chiroprator's shall rule the world.
I've immediately discovered the point of my blog - to teach myself punctuation.
So here I sit in a vague G 'n' T wonder why I'm considering a blog at all - maybe another last ditch attempt to diarise myself, something that has generally eluded me over 42 years, mostly either being the slight screamed scratchings of a 15 year old which descends into a shopping list of dull routine (went shopping, why doesn't Phoebe like me, shoelaces snapped, jerked off, got drunk, why doesn't Phoebe like me - is it because I get drunk and jerk off, or is it because why shoes are too loose and not becoming?), or an exact similarity but, say, 20 years later but interjected with deep philosophical leanings, such as 'When Religion walks in the room, common sense walks out, and 'Blimey, Phoebe never really did like me, at all, did she?' and so forth - something like the intensely fathom deep and fathomless ramblings of someone on mushrooms. And believe me I know - last time I ever did mushrooms I wrote, recorded and sketched everything and came out with 'Top Tip' gems which seem to involve my head being over warm because the psychedelic gems it was struggling to produce, by necessity had to sap all the body heat from my nether regions and make my willy go small. Fifteen minutes of the tape went to being the sample of a great Stoner rock tune called 'Neither do they have their teeth extracted' which has of course raced up the charts scattering girl-groups in it's wake.
So here I sit;
A 25 year old Ecuadorian girl recently thought I was truly 60.
I'm giving art advice to my 'straight-as-a-carpenter's rule' Stepfather.
My Dad is writing better poetry than me on his 3rd try,
and I'm soon off to Sylt, in Germany, to be artist in residence.
We could call this a mid-life crisis, but my maths is more than terrible, so I probably only have half a bakers dozen's years left, or a disappointingly long time to go.
But there is Canard Roti au Miel et aux Epices to prepare, and a fresh Gordon's to mix.
Cheers!
So here I sit;
A 25 year old Ecuadorian girl recently thought I was truly 60.
I'm giving art advice to my 'straight-as-a-carpenter's rule' Stepfather.
My Dad is writing better poetry than me on his 3rd try,
and I'm soon off to Sylt, in Germany, to be artist in residence.
We could call this a mid-life crisis, but my maths is more than terrible, so I probably only have half a bakers dozen's years left, or a disappointingly long time to go.
But there is Canard Roti au Miel et aux Epices to prepare, and a fresh Gordon's to mix.
Cheers!
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