My Diary - Page Twenty
| 01/10/09:
I went out early to see a man alone in a wooden fort (with hundreds of Red Indians camped outside). We discussed the lines that shoot across a television screen when an angel sits on the aerial and the not well known fact that clergymen are actually gunslingers. I swept back home like the opening scenes of an action film. When I got in I just had time to put coins on eyes in an artist's studio and then had to go out again with a clock face replacing my head - I came home when my mouth reached ten. |
| 02/10/09:
June and I had to carry a marble sphinx to town; it carried its question and answer on a dog disk All the people trapped in the animal house were reading musical scores or looking out of the window at the symphony of life. I had a pebble in my pocket with my name on it (I would change pockets at the end of the over). On the way home we posted a letter in the gibbon box and voted for a gorilla as mayor - he was the one playing a guitar on the television when an Easter Island head crashed through the roof. |
| 03/10/09:
I stood from early to late morning in a celestial alligator's mouth holding its jaws apart. An almost constant stream of passers bye threw scraps of paper on the floor. While waiting for a millipede to come and collect them I assembled them into a message from a glass bottle stranded on a desert island. I wrote a letter to my friends in the clouds - I hadn't received a reply by the time I had to catch a train to a mid west ghost town. I saw at least two ghosts trying to retrieve their six guns from the dust. |
| 04/10/09:
I spent the morning standing in a primeval swamp holding a collection of London street lamps in my arms, when the power supply was disconnected I talked to giant goldfish who were operating instead of taxis; one was in the middle of a row with an American tourist who came armed with Nelson's missing arm. I had to go out in the afternoon with a mixed array of plastic piping protruding from various parts of my anatomy. I returned home late in the day fully plumbed and with a stray spitfire stuck in my hair. |
| 05/10/09:
It was raining outside as I walked a long corridor with a carpet made from hair clippings. My voice followed a little way behind and didn't catch me up until I took a battered Dinky toy car out of my pocket and blew it like a trumpet. June was swimming in the sofa as I made my entrance as a raindrop. After the dog had danced on the mahogany effect coffee table I retired to my studio like a dwarf retiring to his ancestral home in the middle of a mountain. Unfortunately I then accidentally painted the cat. |
| 06/10/09:
When I came down stairs I noticed that the goddess Juno had thrown calendar dates on the floor and had jumped on all of them. I removed the reticulated python I was using as a belt for my trousers and mopped up the numbers - I thought of the cloth that had mopped the brow of Jesus Christ. We went out on the spur of the moment; I carried an apple and Juno carried the tree. The shopping trip was only partially successful and I returned without the uninhabited island I had set my heart on. |
| 07/10/09:
I picked up a newspaper from the early Nineties as June left the house astride a white dove. I then painted the desert in many bright colours while she had all her hair cut off. We discussed painting road markings on the top of her head until I remembered a book by Erich Von Daniken showing a series of giant animal shapes which could be viewed from space. As the day light faded I saw my face reflected in a window looking like an astronaut who couldn't remember were he had parked his space ship. |
| 08/10/09:
I went out before seven dressed as a guitar; I plucked myself whenever the bus stopped and got off just before the bridge - the people with rainbow hair were obscured by low cloud. I found the string man at home and we experimented with knots, I left completed tied up and with two landscapes under my arm (they were provisional landscapes for a provisional world). I entered the town via a long sleeved garment and changed bags at the armpit; June was preparing to go out disguised as a vacuum cleaner. |
| 09/10/09:
I got up with termites infesting the timbers of my face - I scratched my head in time to the music. June went out with a steering wheel hidden in her handbag and I looked in the mirror for clues to the murder mystery which was being performed all around me. I later cut holes in the theatre set and watched a family of ants move to the high meadows of the wild west. The ageing gunfighter had toothache and was standing in the street contemplating his next move when the credits were suddenly shown. |
| 10/10/09:
A little sprite entered the house via the chimney so we had to race round the house as fast as possible to try and catch her. Everyone else came and went by way of the long mirror in the hall (only the dove people could enter through the wardrobe mirror). I dressed up as a tree - my leaves slowly developing autumnal tints - and carried the little bird to see how the big birds wrap coloured lights in their hair. We ended the day in a room of coloured lights with giant people moving and the sprite asleep. |
| 11/10/09:
We all got up late! I quickly wiped the smile off the bathroom door and took all our old stones to David who was still waiting for Goliath to arrive. After the customary salutations I left as an Old Testament Prophet just as the Biblical flood was announced. I rode home in a French Revolution tumbrel and let myself in with the dog's key. June had recently taken possession of the remnants of purple birthday cake from a young girl who was balanced on our banister holding a cutlass. |
| 12/10/09:
I crept down the stairs just after the shadow of Isis had disappeared down the corridor. Bugsy Malone, the cat, hid his pocket calculator as I waltzed by wearing a deliberately informal garden hedge. I put all my possessions in a disused bird nest and picked up a picture of three naked women on a beach. This done I spoke to Tim and painted designs on sand castles until my wife emerged from the washing machine. We then swapped old clothes for new and took the rabbit to his weekly ballet lesson. |
| 13/10/09:
June left the house early; walking along the clothes lines until she disappeared behind a life size model of the Titanic. Some time after I emerged from a prehistoric tar pit riding on the back of a sabre tooth tiger and then spent the morning in a goldfish tank sitting, for the main part, on a translucent plastic sea shell. I escaped just after noon by travelling in an air bubble all the way up into my studio - which was set up with kaleidoscopic lights and Marshall amplifiers for a Jimi Hendrix concert. |
| 14/10/09:
In my sleep I wrote film scripts using parts of my dreams, one concerned a group of insane people who acted as vigilantes and detectives - I woke as a being comprised of five distinct sexes. June had, meanwhile, walked up the hill to see the people wrapped in silk cocoons; I remained in the Saxon village pondering pupation in Norman times. The gnarled tree on the mantelpiece issued thought bubbles; in one was the image of James the first dressed as a witch. I put a scrap of paper in the fire. |
| 15/10/09:
Having forgotten to post the letter I posted myself, arriving through the old man's letter box when it was still dark. We sat and talked, me with a chipmunk on my head and him with a collection of Nineteen Sixties cookery books - I ate a cheese flan with scrapnel from a Second World War bomb. After filling my bag with grass I made my herbivorous way home, turning up as a Friesian (my wife appeared a bit later as a Jersey cow with a bell), rescuing a stray milkmaid on the way. |
| 16/10/09:
June and I had a lay in; watching a pride of lions circle the light before jumping in. June wasn't feeling very well and went to a local football ground to be checked out as a centre forward. I sat on the side line drawing trees on a football for a family of orang-u-tans. I got a red card and she got the all clear so we came home via a meeting place for home sick leprechauns. I cast a spell and spent the rest of the day in my studio croaking like a bullfrog. June went out again in the evening. |
| 17/10/09:
I woke up suddenly and found myself pegged out on the clothes line, June having gone to work in a Greek trireme. I fed the birds with antique bread crumbs washed up in my jacket pockets and then cleaned the steps to the family lighthouse. While on my knees I spoke to our past neighbour as she flounced by with a small rowing boat stuck to her nose. The occupants of the vessel had fallen out onto a map of the Isle of Wight and were waiting for the ferry to descend attached to a hot air balloon. |
| 18/10/09:
June and I moved apart on diverging islands drifting out into the Atlantic ocean (she doesn't like her soup too thick), I entered a bubble and travelled to an enchanted wood where the bird people congregated - from my perch I could see the world turn inside out to reveal its lining and washing instructions. Our group of bandits cut down trees and lined them up in neat rows, pretending that a tribe of ancient Britons were closing in on the other side of the hill. I phoned my wife and said hello |
| 19/10/09:
The polar bears stared at each other as their small packets of ice sheet moved apart. I went back to sleep for five minutes and then jumped up dressed as Pierrot, running downstairs with pages of musical manuscript on fire in my pocket. I put a trombone in my holster and waited for high noon - June came back at twelve thirty with a basket of wet washing. We met like fiddler crabs on a warm tropical beach; the white clouds gliding overhead revealed the score of Beethoven's tenth symphony. |
| 20/10/09:
June went out early encased in a wooden log, I saw her float up stream in the guise of an early Red Indian. While she was out I drew faces on my drum kit and manned the barricades during the Paris Commune - Poppy the dog had a quiet day painting in her studio (and got a lot done). Once the meteorite shower had ended I ran out to get food for the extraterrestrial refugees; we ate chips and planned how we would celebrate the supernova. I had extra vinegar on my chips. |
| 21/10/09:
I |
| 22/10/09:
I |
| 23/10/09:
I |
| 24/10/09:
I |