bleeargghh!

oh well it looks like it's that time of year again, all consuming apathy and inability to do anything creeps in.

at least i've got the football now, a season ticket for venezia - pride of serie c1!
yesterday we were away to cittadella and it was the worst game so far. BUT lunch was good, we found a trattoria near castelfranco veneto which specialised in grilling things on a huge fire in the middle of the restaurant. it was cheap and i ate too much and drank too much wine but the the ultra' were on form and the singing and insult hurling kept me awake.

today i'm just miserable

bleeeaarrgh!

forza ragazzi!

Well what's new?
NOWT!!

Got a season ticket for SSC Venezia, stars of Serie C1, actually I got it as a present for my birthday. €55.00 with a free hat and flag! That's like one ticket for Newcastle if you can find one! It's a good laugh the match here though, I went to one once a while back, where the ball went over the stands and into the lagoon. The pre-match warm up is good too:
Spritz in Bar Vittoria here in Mestre then on the bus (or motorbikes) to Venice, down to the fist bar on the Strada Nuova for a seafood risotto, a polpetta/piece of squid/prawn skewer and some cheap red plonk....and so begins the tour of the bacari (little bars) until we get to Rialto, then a few bits and pieces "alla botte" (a bar with excellent polpette) then off down to near St Mark's Square aqnd the pile onto the vaporetto to Sant' Elena where the stadium is.
Stadium is used in the loosest possible way, pile of planks on scaffolding is nearer to the truth.
Then a quick drinky and off into 'la curva sud' - home of the various Ultras factions, most of whom spend most of the time smoking dope and trying to get everyone else to sing instead of watching the match. According to my scarf I am allied to the Rude Fans, so I'd better watch where I stand. Rude Fans! We stick our tongues out at the opposition and never say pardon me when we burp....

Tomorrow it's Venezia vs Pistoiese

pics from venezia - padova (boo!)

a pea bird ear to me

happy birthday to me
happy birthday to me
happy birthday to me-eeeee
happy birthday to me

40 today :-|

the rotten buggers at work put balloons up on the front door so now all the kids and parents know. stil my little lot in class 5 brought in some cakes and pop so we had a party instead of maths.

which is only right i would say!

you can take a horse to water but a pencil must be lead

tenpastoneant2bottlesl8r

oooh, are they anchovy fillets i spy in that jar?

isn' tit fun ny what misu seoft he spac eb arc ando.

me seat ali aarrrggh"

it's a friday night and we've been watching 'miss italia' for what seems like three days now. sylvester stallone is the guest of honour and he looks like he is melting. it's been on since tea-time and now it's 23:50 and the poor bugger's been there with his translator the whole time, money for old rope her job mind you - "amo gli animali" - 'i love animals'; "voglio lavorare con bambini" - 'i want to work with children'; "volevo sposarmi con un giocatore della juve ma sono nella seria b adesso, quindi ho cambiato idea...ma vieri e' ancora single?" - 'i love animals'. only 3 phrases to translate.
hang on! hang on! all the lasses who've been elimated so far (24,376) are line dancing to a c&w remix\of "staying alive" - oh how i love italy!!!

well, i'm supposed to be working on the biography of stoke's greatest living anagram of a body of water but i've just been a bit distracted.
kind of hammered a bottle of valpolicella (zonin) - a cheap but pretty damn fine slurp from the coop, one of my favourites at the moment at about 4 euro it tastes much more expensive. at the moment i am supping a sangiovese di romagna, superiore, from the terre cevico stable. it too is a damn fine plonk and was in fact surprisingly strong enough of flavour to frollow the valpolicella. must dash, they're going to choose the winner of miss italia - oh the politically incorrectness of it all, the bikinis, the sheer fabric of the 'evening wear' - i reckon they put the air-conditioning on for two specific reasons.....
nope, wrong it was just an advert break.

been listening to a lot of ska recently, stuff from the late 70's early 80's, especially the selecter and the specials and earlier stuff like the skatalites and the old trojan record stable lot. 'train to skaville' by the ethiopians is getting worn out here followed by the same song done live by the selecter, in fact my new lose the belly regime seems to consist of moonstomping and skanking around the house whilst tidying up, doing the ironing and the like. building those shelves today wasn't easy mind and i had to put a bit of willard grant conspiracy on to ease the sweating. oh! and "it mek" by desmond\dekker is pretty good to peel potatoes to as well.

they made stallone act out the "adrienne!!" scene from rocky with one of the contestants - she was better than him!

Eggbert Spoonbender.

Eggbert Spoonbender,
King of Teeth.
His interchangeable knee-boots
Made of jelied beef,
With his gargling chicken shirt
And fried egg mobile phone,
He's coming to a street near you.
Make sure your not at home.


Written as an example to Class 5 when they wher Class 4.

back, front and sideways from the jollydaze

well dear reader,

the summer holiday is almost over and it's nearly time to go back to the grind. i've been off work since the end of june and i'm having difficulty remembering just what my job is! "but what has he been up to all that time?" i hear you say , followed by "my god his hearing's good!" then "and his imagination" then "hang on, i didn't think that!" and then "..or that! but my word i have in fact just thought all of that, and as i read i find that i am in fact thinking exactly what is written upon the screen. uncanny! the lad must have someof the magick powers about him, a touch of the ol' aleister crowley, or perhaps even the great doris 'i have a john coming through, is there a john in the hall' stokes."
and all of that is true.
interesting though, isn't it? how you never hear from doris stokes any more now that she's dead. you would have thought there would have been no stopping her popping across to fill us in on the goings on in limbo. (just try and explain that grammar to an italian doctor who insists on knowing the correct names for the grammatical elements before even trying to understand what is actually being said.) that part in brackets is of course optional.
so what have i been up to then? you know i have no idea! went to gateshead, home of the now defunct Isaac Tucker &Sons brewery. Isaac was me mam's great, great granda or something. in gateshead i met the startlingly trousered concrete poet of the potteries - monsieur sol nte. amazingly flexible for someone made of concrete i thought.

best thing i've seen in years - a very polite, if not a little timid too, gallery assistant at the BALTIC centre for contemporary arts (gateshead) trying to ram a motorcycle crash helmet onto sol's be-dreadlocked bonce and them him taking off slowly and unsteadily to do three laps of the gallery space on a tiny, mini-motorbike. i think i actually guffawed, and i thought that only victorian gentlemen did that.

what else? shaved all my hair off, drank a lot of whisky, got conjunctavitis, bought an new shirt, some new dr martens and some braces a shed load of cds and a computer game. yes a game! was sick of doing little and worrying about the fact that i thought that i'd might as well doing nothing constructively and in a way that the act of doing nothing and wasting my time actually took my mind off the fact that i was in fact doing nothing and wasting my time.

been listening to a lot of old ska from the 60's and the late 70's - i'd forgotten just how much i really like it and that to has helped take my mind off the fact that i have reached a bit of a sticky bit in the biopgraphy of sol nte (which is brilliant in parts!) in fact here are the last lines:

“And the others we make by carefully cutting out pictures from the Weekly Kebab and Curry Courier and making colour photocopies of them.”

see what i mean? well perhaps not. but i haven't written anything for weeks, i keep having ideas but never get around to fleshing them out. i'm on page 50 (A5 pages) and intend to send the whole thing to roger stevens for editing. seeing as how all he does is shuffle around in his BHS plaid slippers, sucking on a clay pipe, reciting humorous verse and rushing to do the vacuuming and wash the dishes before Jill gets in from work i reckon he'd be perfect. i suppose i should ask him first though....naaaaa! (hello roger !)

"...Ken’s wife Phyllis as she looked up to see a large woolly devotional candle which seemed to be trying to steal a falafel, encouraged by a priest; another scream from Sol as he realised that that stray spark theory has in fact a solid foundation; another scream from Phyllis as she realised that that wasn’t a falafel...

I'm having trouble keeping him out of prison.

I did spent nigh on 2 months working with Alison Knowles which was wonderful, but i've written about that...Oh i spent some time with mark bloch recently, we had an amble around venice together - very nice chappie. but what else? spent a lot of time playing with the hooligans who turned 2 on the 13th august. they had a great time in england. CARPETS! they have no fear and like jumping off high things.
well the hangover is hanging on...
over and out of it


"“What the hell am I going to do with a shiny lasagne?” he asked Hector Singh, head chef. Singh wasn’t really Hector’s surname, it was Sows but he thought that Singh sounded better, considering."

and then the enquiry came and suddenly i had him back...

hippo birdie

aha! i am still here, just completely lacking in time and energy to write anything.
today was the boys' birthday, two years old already!
has anyone seen 'the wiggles'? what is THAT all about!?

did you have full consent to keep samples from ......?
of course, i checked with the solicitor.
you do realise the damage these cases can cause!
hello silvia.
i'm sorry its, what would you do.
i'd wait.

A Rake's Progress

Tonight we open the show Alison Knowles: Time Samples.

We'll be performing too.

It's all been a bit full on but it's come together nicely - it's a very beautiful and striking show, which I won't even try to explain or describe. Perhaps one day when I have time to breathe (and and ADSL line) I'll post some pics.

Our time together in Venice is drawing to a close, it has been wonderful. I'm not sure what I'm going to do now, I mean I'll have free time!

Spoil the boys, have a kip, finish the biography of Sol Nte what I am writing. I founf it the other night, and do you know, in parts it's actually quite good.
A bit like Sol really!

An Excerpt:


“Good afternoon sir!” said a thick set barman
sporting a thick set handlebar moustache,
corduroy car-coat, well oiled pedal-pushers and
a pair of ice skates.
“Good afternoon bar-keep!” said Sol, who’d
never seen a handlebar moustache before, well
not one with bell and dynamo lamp anyway.
“How can I help you?” asked the barman.
“I wonder if you can help me” asked Sol, “I am a
little lost, I am tired an hungry and would like to
rest a while. Perhaps I may take advantage of
the warmth of your hearth and if you have a
menu I’d be most pleased to peruse it.”
“You look tired and hungry my friend” offered
the barman, “And if I am not mistaken have the
look of a man lost, tired and hungry. Sit you
down, rest you, take advantage of our hearth,
perhaps you would like to take a gander at the
menu whilst you warm yourself.”
He led Sol to an armchair by the fire. Sol settled
his arm into the chair and waited as the barman
pulled up another armchair, a footstool, and a
headboard. Sol settled himself and sat on the
floor.
“You make yourself comfortable whilst you look
at the menu,” said the barman, “I have other
customers to attend to.”
“I see that you have other customers to attend to,”
said Sol. “I’ll just make myself comfortable and
look at the menu while I wait. Oh and by the
way, it would appear that your skates are
melting.”
Sol had the strangest feeling that the barman was
not only mumbling but in fact talking backwards
as he had not understood a word he had said.
Reaching into his travelling bag Sol pulled out his
reading monocle and looked at the menu. Turning
the menu the right way up he polished his monocle
on his shirt tail, making it completely unusable,
(seeing this however the barman did sneak up
and cut a small portion of Sol’s shirt tail off and
made his way quietly to the ‘Specials’ board,
where he added a new soup.) and was still
unable to read it. Squinting at the menu until his
good eye watered Sol simply could not make
head nor tail of what was written.
“This appears to be written in what I can only
assume to be ‘foreign’.” he thought. “Perhaps I am
near the docks.”

The onion skin song and other such things

it's been a very hectic few weeks dear reader, very hectic indeed. the end of the academic year brings exam preparation, reports, a monstrous cold-sore and a very surreal happening.
over the past couple of weeks i have been working, as normal, at work. teaching the children of class 4 and shouting maths at class 5 whilst eating cinnamon beans. after work and at weekends i have been working with alison knowles, helping to prepare for a performance, which will take place this evening at museo fortuny in venice, and setting up her show entitled "Time Pieces" at the Emily Harvey Foundation, again in venice. We also had to put together a prototype of a piece which will adorn a window of the Villa Buttafava, somewhere near Milan. actually alison put it to gether, i glued it down.
all of this has been relatively straightforward, with the exception of bill stone's video, and gone really rather smoothly for venice.
tonight we will perform alison knowles' 'loose pages', 'onion skin song' and 'shoes of your choice', ay-o's "rainbow", and a couple of pieces which slip my mind. a slippery mind is, alas something that i've had to live with since that first pint of scotch. it's all sort of organised to take off at 6.30 gmt+1 of the afternoon clock and will do so in a most spectacular room - an enormous and crumbling sala of a 15th century palazzo. empty apart from a couple of wardrobes and a large filing cabinet, we will perfom in the centre of the space. props are a 1m squared white podium and a microphone, saran wrap, onion skins, two pages of the score of 'the barber of seville', round bean turner, red bean turner, wooden pecking birds and the 'loose pages' portfolio. after there will be wine!

the surreal happening was this however:
i, through one thing and another i was really behind with the school reports for class 4 - and not a little stressed! alison knowles had expressed an interest in coming into school to meet the kids. so i got it arranged and in she came. she talked about beans and books and the kids talked about their experiences with beans and the books they were making and a very interesting session took place. the children were rapt and even began to write haiku about what was going on. i in the meantime was flying around, purple and sweating, trying to get everything ready for 4p.m.
at one point i looked up from the envelopes i was addressing and saw that alison knowles - an artist who i had studied at university, who i'd never even dreamt of meeting was now in my classroom, teaching my class, effectively saving my backside whilst i did all the stuff i should have done at least a week previously!

weird!

Raa!

Alison Knowles

Alison Knowles phoned this evening, to ask me to perform with her in Venice.

That was a surprise.

And qite possible the most interesting thing thats happened around the old FFFO HQ for a looong time.

You can see the medication is doing its job by the sheer dullness of these posts.
I'm not sure how I feel about that! Sometimes I wonder if the sacrifices I make to stay 'balanced' are really worth it - the things I'm unable to do when I feel OK make me feel bad, but the medication stops me from feeling so bad that I can actually produce the stuff I do when I don't feel so good, and sonit goes around.
I bore myself!

late

I found this on me desktop, I obviously finished the wine before getting round to posting....

Busy preparing an asparagus risotto, accompanied by my "Testpiecesymphoney", yes I do spell symphoney like that for a reason. Just opened a 'Trebbiana do Romagna" which was on special - and is, if I may say a rather pleasantly fruity little number. Not actually taht bad considering what I paid for it - the sheer embarrassment of its cheapness prevents me from communicting figures here, but it was stupidly cheap. OK, Ok it's not a wine of any great note, but it's pretty good for €1.70.
Oh dear....

I've also just opened a bottle of "Sangiovese di Romagna". Oh there's a bit of my symphoney that sounds just like Lou Reed's 'street hassle', but slower ande a bit indianish. Anyway the Sangiovese is a little rougher, but still not bad for the pittance I paid.
May the gods bless the Coop and it's special offers for the poor of the parish!

Mind you, all of this follows two pints of beer and two sprizz (White wine, 'Select' - the local, slightly less bitter version of 'Campari' and fizzy water. The local aperativo you can have with Aperol or Campari too.)
So the old neurons in charge of the tasty buddlers may not be in perfect sync.

I may let you know later what the risotto was like. If it is as good as the hummus I made for lunch I'll be happy. But hopefully I won't fall asleep and wake up with a mouth that feels like it's beencarpeted with garlic flavoured felt.

I love asparagus, despite the italian fixation that it makes your pee smell bad. I mean, do we really know anyone whose pee smells good? Yes I know that some of you like these things, but in general......?

The Trip

My goodness it's been a long time dear reader! I simply just have not had the time to write anything here for ages. Actually the fact that I haven't actually done anything anywhere for ages doesn't help either.
A couple of weeks ago I went to the UK, to the Lakeside Y.M.C.A National Centre on Lake Windermere, with 18 kids from the school - age range 10 - 14 years old.

I must be mental!

The place is well groovy, really beautiful, clean, great staff, well organised - but the kids were another kettle of fish - and not just for the smell. For the journey (Venice - Zurich, Zurich - Manchester) my colleague and I kept all the kids' documents, except for when they had to show them to passport control/immigration etc. In Venice airport I found £30 and two passports in Zurich! Luckily the passports had photos and names, everyone denied losing the 30 quid! But, alas I is a honest fellow and persisted - still waiting for a thank you from the bambino who was nearly 50 euros out of pocket. About four minutes after arriving in Manchester I found another couple of documents, one perched neatly on the toilet roll holder in the bogs before passport control. By the time we'd got to the motorway service station for something to eat I'd found two mp3 players. Later in the week I found an iPod, which was in my pocket for a day or two - nobody missed it! I remember losing me 10p dinner money one day at school, I was ill with worry. 10p was quite a lot in 1976 but it was more for the fact that I'd been trusted to look after it and I'd failed.
If you ignore the arrogant and spoilt behaviour, the refusal to listen to instructors carefully, the inability to self-organise (e.g. set an alarm clock - 1 per room of 6 children), and to pick up after themselves, the inability to accept an instruction such as "tidy away the cups please" without questioning it, ...
then it was a good week.
We went canoeing, kayaking, climbing, walking, did some archery, orienteering, went on a boat trip on the lake across to Bowness, did some shopping, ate loads of sweeties, played football, went swimming in the lake (madness!) and completely failed to complete ANY of the teambuilding, initiative tests (that speaks volumes)

....TBC as the lunch bell has just gone

barcelona-milan

damn!
i'd just finished a very good offline entry, ready to cut and paste here, when......

notepad froze! NOTEPAD!!!! i mean that just doesn't happen!

anyway i had writen all about what was happening in te barcelona - milan game, a woman in a black dress, the first mosquito kill of the year and how i was planning to change the spellings of first and least to firts and leats as they seem easier to type.

anyway milan are out of the champions. so hopefully arenal will beat villa real and we'll have a decent final.

pity you can't read the rest of what i'd written, it was really good.

lurgies

spent the past two weeks with the hacking glob expurgers, the explungding lungs and the nostril glueshutters. and just as i thought i'd got rid of them along came the raging dollops, the gut crinkers and the ringstingers from hell. my grips were cribbled and my hrenks nonconflunchulated.

but i lost quite a bit of me belly

THE GREAT MESTRE YOGHURT EXPLOSION OF 2006

Dan looked at Joe, his natural yoghurt and honey, cavalier's moustache glinting in the light of the kitchen lamp. Joe returned the look, a glint and more than just a hint of dairy product in his eye, nose, ears and hair.
"BOB!" they shouted in unison.
"Na na" cried Dan pointing to the devastation which had once been a cheap, but clean and functional worksurface, "Na na, nana naa naaa!"
"BOB!" added Joe launching an 'Anyway Up Cup' with the skill akin to that of a fully paid up member of the Black Block brick Throwers Union.
"BOB!" and away went a spoon.
"NANA!" followed by his sticky sibling's proof of skill with the Surprise Dessert Dish Lob.

And the curtains were pencilled in for an earlier than scheduled wash.