PART 2: Gleanings from the gloaming mind...possible chapters

aka tattered bits dropped here to show... this show is... not.. dead.

Friday 10th October 1.30 am Parkway bedsit¹²

Still dreamin’ after all those tears

Crossing Camden High street this afternoon, though walking trop Parkie I was very happy with my multi layer ensemble of old clothes. Vans slip ons - the classic check but grey on grey, H&M women’s black flared trakkie bottoms, hand died black Sunspel t-shirt, old grey flannel Quiksilver buttoned overshirt, Black Amazon Essentials hoodie (left by a guest)³, and on top Navy blue nylon Barbour⁴ bomber jacket. I was feeling slightly more than usually zonked but I was out on the streets struttin [actually poor soul more shruttin than struttin], and I was doin it four layer style. I’d messaged R a few weeks back

As I wended my now very slow way up Parkway I began to riff on my immanent transition to Octogenarian. I would become a Camden punk Quentin Crisp…somewhere along the way I thought it would be fun to explore having a real hair wig made…silver of course…Like Andy..[anyroad I just blanked out for second and nearly fell off my chair so it being 5.40 I wish you all good night..]

[I’ve bought the footnotes into the body of the kirk because i love listening to what i’ve written being read by the substack AI and it hasn’t been programmed to read the footnotes..omg when i wrote it hasn’t been programmed it felt quite rude and i imagined that when it was reading this it saying in a nice jokey way I can read the footnotes but you don\t know how to set that up for me…

1. It’s over a week since I wrote the above so I can’t remember what I wanted to footnote here …but for new readers (God bless you…) I should explain that I rent out my beloved two bedroomed and gardened basement flat to lovely Airbnb guests whose rave reviews give me huge emotional succur and whose dollars help pay the bills. By some kind of miracle the idiosyncratic Irishman P who had just taken over the flat fom his mate J more of whom later offered me his front room for free in return for my decorating the entire flat. So now I have a fabulously mucky messy upstairs pad with a window past which almost everyone who lives in or visits north London must pass (more monomania slipping out).

2. P who now for his sins (God bless him too) finds himself willy nilly my minder…A role that consists mostly of checking whenever I leave the house that I have my keys…the right keys. And very kindly, without any prompting from me he keeps me in single malt whisky. He comes into my room every evening peers around through his tiny antique round rimmed specs and asks hows the whisky going? Currently I’m enjoying a very handsome bottle of Bushmills single malt…which when i opened the box still had its supermaket security tag on…P not a bit abashed said \oh that\s odd -will you be able to get it off ok? This is not the first time of security tags…to be drinking liberated malt amid the muddle seems somehow entirely appropriate.

3. I’d hankered after a black hoodie for years but felt it was too cliched/foolish/pretentious at my age and being so damn middle class to buy one…Whereas wearing an old Amazon Essentials hoodie that someone left behind made wearing it entirely unburdened - a gift from the universe…and P said (with a frown) when I wore it with the hood up that i looked like a gangster…(moi? …vraiment un gangster?) she caught my pleasure and said a very old gangster…

4. The nylon Barbour was a gift from my younger daughter…who has bought me many beautiful treasures. But in my Devon days the shiny nylon and lack of a proper collar had not worked for me. But now as i was flexing my badass mood it seemed so right.

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