No, on second thoughts – hold the spam – just take all my bank details and my NI no as well while you are at it. It’s ok – it’s a free-for-all courtesy of some fantastically inept and bumbling buffoon in the government that thought he/she/it/plankton would chance it by sending out top security data via non-top security means. Not even the sniff of a recorded delivery. Oh no! What? It didn’t arrive? Never mind – only 25 million people’s details on there…….sort-code and account number, address, that sort of thing. No worries – we’ll send another copy – we’ll send it recorded this time – just in case. Could you let me know if you can be bothered to get a signature for it? Oh, I see – most of the people who work for your establishment can’t read or write yet let alone speak intelligably? No wonder it didn’t get there the first time. Oh well. Let me know if it turns up won’t you. And then I get this….
Dear Honest Friend, My name is Ms. Margaret Krissie I am a dying woman who have decided to donate what I have to you/ church. I am 58 years old and I was diagnosed for cancer for about 3 years ago, immediately after the death of my husband, who has left me everything he worked for. I have been touched by God to donate from what I have inherited from my late husband to you for the good work of God, rather than allow my relatives to use my husband hard earned funds ungodly. Please pray that the good Lord forgive me my sins. I have asked God to forgive me and I believe he has because He is a merciful God. I will be going in for an operation in less than one hour. I decided to WILL/donate the sum of US$7,500,000 (Seven Million, Five Hundred Thousand US Dollars Only) to you for the good work of the lord, and also to help the motherless and less privilege and also for the assistance of the widows. At the moment I cannot take any telephone calls right now due to the fact that my relatives are around me and my health status. I have adjusted my WILL and my lawyer is aware I have changed my will and he will arrange the transfer of the funds from my account to you. But this fund is in a bonded state with an irrevocable comprehensive insurance cover, as a security measure against my husband relatives. I wish you all the best and may the good Lord bless you abundantly, and please use the funds well and always extend the good work to others. Contact my lawyer with this specified Email Address: – {emorganlawyer@aol.com } and tell him that I have WILLED US$7,500,000 (Seven Million, Five Hundred Thousand US Dollars Only) to you by quoting my personal reference number E-Morgan and Associates EM/EG/WILL/092514131209 and I have also notified him that I am WILLING that amount to you for a specific and good work. I know I don’t know you but I have been directed by God to do this. Thanks and God bless. NB: I will appreciate your utmost confidentiality in this matter until the task is accomplished as I don’t want anything that will jeopardize my last wish. And Also I will be contacting with you by email as I don’t want my relation or anybody to know because they are always around me. Best Regards, Ms. Margaret Krissie.
So you are not that ill that you can’t sit there going cross-eyed on e mail spamming people all day but you are too ill to take calls Margaret? Well, I tell you what. Most of the mothers in this country – a fair few amount of them single mothers have now been exposed to possible identity theft of a much greater kind than you are suggesting. $7.5M is the least of our worries! And while you are at it – hurry up and die – it won’t be a day too soon scumbag.
Now we know what Amy keeps in her beehive – and I don’t think it is a hankie!
Is that a bullet in your beehive or couldn’t you wait to get backstage for another toot?! Oh dear. I hope she gets through all this I really do.
Terrible nightmares: why do we have them? Last Monday morning I woke up distraught and exhausted after a cruelly vivid dream of my deceased best friend (whom I still miss terribly most days) visiting me as if she had come back from the dead. She was pregnant, a bit wild-eyed and definitely not right. The worst thing about it all was that she told me that her real surviving son (who by coincidence is 7 today) is not Mr XX’s at all (her real-life ex-husband) but in fact the product of Satan (my ex-boyfriend) and that she had come back from ‘the other side’ to tell me that she was pregnant again with his second child! Absolutely nightmarish in every degree. Awful. Why why why would I dream such a horror? What is even weirder is that she hated Satan in real life. Maybe it was simply her impending son’s birthday that triggered off something. It was so horrible.
Then this morning I woke up in a terrible flap and sobbing again as I had another awful dream – this time about running off with a morbidly obese, bespectacled African dignitary. We ran off to live in my first ever bedsit flat that I left home for 22 years ago. As I returned with nothing except this man I felt a familiar damp chill in the air as I opened my old door. It often felt colder in than out in that flat. The carpet and walls were the same but because it didn’t have my things in it any more it suddenly looked more grubby and smaller than I remember it. I turned back to look at this man and thought ‘Oh my god, what have I done?’ There was such a terrible air of finality about it all. I kept saying ‘it’s different, it’s so different but I can’t put my finger on it’. The man with his thick-rimmed glasses and dark orange stretchy top straining over his huge tummy was very patient and kind and kept saying ‘Don’t worry, it will be fine, it’s ok’ when it so obviously was not. And then the realisation which was the most nightmarish part of the dream and one thankfully that didn’t last long as it was so utterly devastating and horrific revealed itself. I turned to my elopee and said ‘I know what it is’ as I clutched both sides of my head and scrunched my hair so hard it really hurt and repeatedly choked ‘There is no H (my son in real life) here, there is no H here, that’s what it is. What have I done? What have I done?’. The sickening realisation. What had I done? I had run off with this person who was very nice and inoffensive but so ridiculously not me and had willingly abandoned my child and everything I had that was precious to me. I had not thought about the consequences until it was too late. The man said (a little more angrily and unsettlingly agitated now) ‘We can’t go back, we are here together now’ and made me lay my head on his big soft tummy. I felt trapped and helpless. It was so awful and distressing. I woke up in a panic not knowing where I was and thinking for a split-second it was all true. I’m almost too scared to go to sleep tonight. It was one of those vivid and tiring dreams that stay with you all day. I have no idea what has set this spate of horrible emotionally fraught dreams off and am praying for sweet dreams or none at all for the next week – it’s too exhausting. What is your worst dream? And no – no cheese was involved just in case you were wondering!
Ladies and Gentlemen – I have found a cure for autumn/winteritis or whatever it is called. Just play Minder by Dennis Waterman really loudly first thing in the morning – it’s the best. I feel so much better now after seething on the tube because I was squashed by a bloke who had to sit with his legs wide open listening to ‘extreme classical’ on his ipod whilst tapping really loudly on his PSP for 12 bloody stops! Of course he got off the stop before me. No peace for the wicked.
I’ve been pondering all sorts of useless things in my half sleep this week for some strange reason. And in my half sleep I have been consciously reminding myself to blog about it later in the day when I am awake. Buggered if I can remember anything now – everything seems so clear in the demi-sleep of 04:45am. One of the things that popped into my head was why we have 3 different ways of accounting for shoe size in the world. Why do we? It took me years to work out whether I was a 37 or 38 and always secretly wanted to be a 39. Why do we have English 1,2,3,4,5, etc, European 35,36,37 etc and then there are US sizes which are half a size down I think. How did that all come about? Answers on a grain of rice please. I’m dying to know.
There is an excellent piece on how crap Katie Melua’s lyrics are over at Urban Woo’s. I commented by posting up a poem titled I Wanna Be Yours by genius poet legend John Cooper Clarke by way of a point that lyrics that are made up of analogies can be very powerful – unless of course you are Mike Batt ex-wombler and chief lyricist for Katie Crap. This led me to an inevitable foray into youtube. I found one of my favourite JCC pieces from 1979 music show called Something Else – god I loved that programme mainly because they had a lot of punk bands on playing live that no one else would air. In 1979, Something Else broadcast John Cooper Clarke in a urinal reciting ‘Twat’. I was going to post it up but some ‘twat’ has put silly noises over all the rude and swear words – it is utterly ruined. So you will have to make do with this instead. It is the opening number to a film by Nick May called Ten Years In An Open-Necked Shirt about punk performance poets. Midnight Shift by John Cooper Clarke accompanied by Linton Kwesi Johnson’s band (I think).
Stop Press: we have a new candidate at Munterspace this week – click here for extreme munterness
I have just realised via my friend who after 13 years away from real and changing life as we know it…….I have just realised that I have come to accept so much of the unacceptable. The copious pressure of life. Ordinary life. Life that shouldn’t be a part of the 21st century. Backward, broken life. Why have we become so accepting of things that don’t work properly? Things or situations that are genuinely uncomfortable? Nothing works in London. Everything is a chore. We have embraced hardship. We have embraced difficulty and awkwardness and have learned to live with it. We have learned to be governed by machines. Phones – texts – e mails – never out of touch. Always contactable but never entirely neccessary. Perhaps these are the assorted ramblings of a mad woman but I am currently feeling awfully out of sorts with everyday London life. I dare say life in the ‘cuntry’ is any different….Where to go? Where indeed? When on earth was there ever a traffic jam at 11.30pm at night and why? For god’s sake. What am I doing in Victoria? I am on the Hades bus – the trip to nowhere very slowly indeed.
Two lumpy spinster sisters with matching soft rosy cheeks have just sat down one beside and one opposite. They are eyeing my scribble with disdain. I have two bags – one crammed full of work papers and personal post that I haven’t had a chance to open over the last few weeks. Try explaining that to the boring bank people that waste world time by calling you up to remind you that you have missed a payment.The other bag is bright mustard yellow and has a pair of high heeled boots in it. No one understands. Doubtless I will be able to decipher this myself in the morning as I am scribbling from the back of the bumpiest bus in the world. The two spinster sisters are trying to read what I am writing but it is so quickly and bumpily written it is almost in code. Only my champagne-scrambled brain will be able to work it all out in the morning. Bloody hell.
Sloane Square – is that all? Slow slow slow.
Feet up on opposite seat now – Route79 wouldn’t approve but it is the only way I can steady myself. The sisters got off at Beaufort Street. They probably share a mansion flat. No more peeking. No more speculating. Just back to their lonely cells. They both looked so out of time and place. A throwback to goodness knows when. Disappointed not-very-pretty debutantes that no one wanted to marry.
Perhaps I got too used to black cabs from an early age? I could always justify the cost of a black cab. I used to be a nightbus afficionado but graduated to black cabs with ease by the time I was 21. Now I am the scribbly lady – scrabbling scribbling into her notebook on the bus.
Well if you will put out your long-awaited album for free on the tinternet – what do you expect?
This story is a week old but is still extremely present and is one of the reasons why I haven’t been blogging lately. Big up to Jason Lewis who as of last Saturday 06 October 2007 completed the first ever circumnavigation of the globe via human power. No wind, no sails just hiking, kayaking, rollerblading, cycling and pedalling his custom-built pedal boat Moksha on the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian ocean and Channel legs. You can read the fascinating journal here or go to the main site here.
I became involved (by utter random fluke!) around 6 years ago mainly as part of the media support team. I was catering manager and boat-pusher on Saturday. Developing ideas for tv and producing is fine. Boat-pushing is fine. Sorting out a completion party for 120 people made me bite all my nails off. How am I going to cram everything in my car without destroying the clutch? How am I going to get everything there in time? Why haven’t the fluorescent vests been delivered from the man on ebay yet? Will anyone like the food? Will there be enough food? Will we actually get everyone in to the venue? Are the chairs comfortable enough for the old people? Will anyone actually eat? Will the tealights be a fire hazard? The answer to the last question was yes – they set fire to flowers on the table near visiting babies heads if you are not careful. The expedition was a truly incredible feat. A proper adventure fraught with the inevitable near-death experiences due to illness, an insistent crocodile, far too many snakes, military coups, the ocean in general and severe injury not to mention the incessant lack of funds to keep going from day to day and dodgy government officialdom doing their best to thwart progress. 13 years and 46505 miles later Jason arrived to clamouring hordes of broadcast and press journalists.
Most of us donned our fluorescent vests earlier that morning in a valiant attempt to keep the ensuing media scrum under control. The most heartening thing about the last minute or two of the final finish which involved us pulling Moksha from a slipway in Greenwich, through the streets and up the hill to the Greenwich Meridian was the public crowd lining the final route all cheering and clapping so happily. It was truly overwhelming. I turned to Sher (who accompanied Jason on the Mumbai to Djibouti leg) behind me and tried to speak but realised I was gulping like a goldfish with what felt like a big hard stone lodged in my chest. A big chunk of emotion disabling me from doing anything apart from continuing to push the boat and grin inanely with tears pouring silently down my face. I couldn’t see the front but I know Jason was completely overcome. Not surprising really.
The party went by without a hitch and was enhanced greatly by the 12 magnums and huge Jeroboam of fabulous champagne as well as a further 48 bottles of award-winning red and white so generously donated by Lynn Murray of Taittinger for the day. A good time was had by all. The best thing about the final day was the feeling of family within the previously scattered team – members from America, UK, Belgium, India, Singapore et al all came together at Greenwich and worked together to ensure the day went smoothly. I met people I have never met before but feel I have known all my life due to the common ground we share with the expedition. A great and true human first. Expedition 360 does not end here. We aim to continue the ethos and original premise of the expedition in other media and educational forms for the future. I am proud and honoured to be a part of it.
John Macartney for Radio 4’s Excess Baggage programme interviews Jason Lewis here.All photographs Copyright Paul Cox www.paulcoxphotographic.com
I loathe pretty much anything with pineapple in it but can in fact tolerate fresh pineapple. Do I get first prize for this week’s most inane and dull opener across the blogosphere? Oh I do hope so. Anyway, bear with me – all will become clear shortly. Someone offered me some dried fruit in a meeting last week. Oh the choice, shall I have the orange or the green or the yellow shoe leather? I foolishly plumped for a clump of small yellow triangly bits. Acccchhhhh! Spit. Growl. Choke. Wince dramatically. Meeting abruptly halts for at least four amazed seconds. Dried pineapple is satanfood it really is. Mango fine. Pineapple no. Then. Then. The next day by weird coincidence I woke up with Rupert Holmes’s classic No 1 hit Escape (The Pina Colada Song) whirling around gaily in my head. Did my brain make a random connection I wonder? Is it some weird form of OCD? Could I get the song out of my head? No. Did I listen to it about five times in a row really loud when I got to work? Yes. Oh how we laughed. Then I had to wiki Rupert Holmes. And then I just had to stop. Enough pineapple related torture already.
For some reason I was going to write something about Mystic Meg but have completely forgotten what it was now. So for now you will just have to listen to and watch the Pina Colada Song.
Bye for now.
Rockmother 