can't look won't look

gordon brown
texture like sun

...
...

i can't look

...
gordon brown is like a
run-over dog in the street
a run over dog that's still alive
...

and down a street you don't have to go down
...

and it is not good viewing
...

at all

...

so you don't go down it
...

i don't want to look
...
if it was a tory i'd probably have the
same gleeful sadism as everyone else

but as it is
i can't look

...

...

temperate-mental

temperate climate
temperamental weather

where priscilla comes from, the prairies,you can see a change in the weather three days away
and it takes forever to get to you
...
while in edinburgh the weather unhurriedly changes 30 times a day
sunny wet gloomy cloudy bright fresh wet sunny
etc etc etc
...
o look, the sun's out
...

the strength in writing and voice

...
...

thousandth edinburgh murky morn
...

some great fun edinburgh sunday night band
the beau nasties
in the jazz bar after midnight
good band
spectacularly great fiddler

after the rocking show at jenny lindsay's club

my first show for seven months and, well

it went great

there's nothing like stressing in quantity to get your brain gear for performance
...
and first time i've seen jennny lindsay and jennifer williams in a while
...
both of whom have rather come on since i saw them
...
its strange to not see a mate like jennifer for what, 18 months, two years
...
and then see how much they've changed
how much they've done
performance wise

...
poetry
poetry book
writing course in Glasgow
major upheaval in life
poetry and music
poetry with soundscape
job as literary officer at traverse theatre
etc

...
which is alot
...
and see and feel the growth of strength in writing and voice
...
its a good feeling
...

though we will have to meet up so i can find out where her mind's been on this journey
and where it might be going
...

fifth-generational intergalactic conflicts

youtubing memorabilia by soft cell
which makes me think of playing
say hello wave gooodbye by soft cell to an ex girlfriend
and her saying
remarkably
shockingly
errr... diverse-adjective-ly
who is this ruining that david gray song?
[david gray did a terrible cover of it twenty years after]
and me thinking
somewhere in the universe there are longstanding fifth-generational intergalactic wars over statements less wrong than that
...
...
...

a great city to take people round

one thing about Edinburgh
its a great city to take people round who've never been here before
as long as they don't mind walking
i remember a fine day with Brendan McCloud and Lucy English
and another with Derrick Brown

i also remember two oversized american poets who i deliberately took up every hill i could
in the hope they might have a heart attack

...
so a fine three hour stroll with p
leith walk, calton hill, the bridges, the royal mile, the tron, the castle carpark for the view, the elephant house, the scott monument, and all the bits in between
and a 22 bus back
...

great stuff

scotland ... or the right thing to do

scotland

for those who know scotland
we bought a few pasties from greggs in berwick
and we were accidentally eating them as we crossed the border
...
which could be described as culturally
the right thing to do
...

so
from thurs to sat
we chewed up the A30
M3
the M25
the M1
the M18
and the A[1M]
...

and i mean we ate them up
the transit van has a jaw a maw a great gobbling mouth
and the maw was underneath as we sat high above england
loving the greenery
and it swallowed up the tarmac
chewed it up near noiselessly and
puffed it out as smoke in our rear

...
and we landed in planet Alnwick
which took some adjusting
as did the very nice Beaconsfield B'n'B
...

aaah greenery
ahhh black pudding
ahhh black sheep bitter
ahhh terraced street pubs
ahhh staunch steadfast strong solid old churches
ahh the beige stone of the streets
ahh bamburgh castle

which turns out to be another lost capital

seeing we went to fifteen or twenty ex-capitals of now forgotten empires
hampi
bidar
badami
tanjore
belur
etc
...

though it was of course a rather smaller kingdom or empire it was capital of
the northumbrian kingdom of the 7th and 8th
...
till it got totalled by the Vikings

...
and we had to go to the castle cos well
we had to go to a castle
cos p had never been to one before
[apart from rosenborg in denmark
and bidar, i supppose, built by Arabs in central India
on a quasi-Italian model]

so now here we are in edin
and i have my first show in seven months
yes SEVEN MONTHS
tonight
which focuses the mind

rather
...
...

new transit

so we have a brand new ford transit
full tank of gas
a map
and the whole world north of here

next stop leicester

alnwick b'n'b

edinburgh

varroom