Justin Currie

Bath, February 25th 2013

We ease into Bath’s one-way web in the early afternoon. I dump my accoutrements in the little box of my room and seize the chance to have some real food. The Yo! Sushi I accidentally settle on is staffed by zombified students who appear to be auditioning for a particularly hellish reality show. One of the chefs is wearing a jauntily poised pork-pie hat over his cook’s skull cap. He’s as unhappy a hipster as you’ll ever see. The sad morsels of finicky food revolve around him like piranha circling for a feeding frenzy. He wards them off by chopping radishes at a lunatic intensity sounding like a woodpecker having a heart attack. My colour-coded plastic dishes pile up in a shaming show of greed. The oceans emptying into rich folks’ mouths.

I like the venue, though like all converted cinemas there was never any need for a backstage so our…—More Tales

Weymouth, 24th February 2013

Finally we leave Weymouth after being waylaid in Bridport along the coast. The show was in the Electric Palace, a well-preserved cinema with some lovely early 20th century fittings. Or were they fixtures? The town seems populated by the posh and I strain to hear a local accent anywhere. Across the road from the venue I buy a little knife from a locksmith and go exploring before the soundcheck, looking for something to slice. I visit a cool little bar/cafe on the main street where the owner shakes my hand and a slightly pissed punter accuses me in a most friendly manner of being the singer of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. He thinks I’m being modest when I deny responsibility for that nineties atrocity. I committed the other nineties atrocity. I have some tea and listen to the proprietor’s soft soul playlist emanating from a pair of quality speakers then cross…—More Tales

Kendal and Weymouth, February 21st & 22nd 2013

It is a relief to quit the strange hotel. I had to resort to headphones to mask the odd noises in the early morning. Shufflings and bleeping. A hollow cough followed by a whining hoover. Kurt Vile, Leonard Cohen and The Leopards did the trick. Barges sit stretched along the coast out on the grey North Sea. We head west to the Lake District, light flakes of snow dancing about the windscreen. Dry stone walls edge the road as we cross the moors and heaths of the Pennines. The week of winter sun has burnt off all but a few scattered patches of ice. The terrain has that distinctively British hue – khaki; neither yellow nor green nor brown but somehow all three at the same time. In spring it will all be emerald. The road dips into more verdant pasture, prettily partitioned and studded with copses.

Kendal sits in a…—More Tales

Leeds, February 19th 2013

I like Leeds. It’s the Manhattan of Yorkshire. The dwellers have interesting faces. They’re open and blunt but oddly into fashion. The venue is a gorgeous little theatre of great vintage. It’s been refurbished but I notice from the big book they have all the performers sign that Jeremy Hardy preferred it before. Jerry Sadowiz just wrote: I should be in musicals. Nobody else seems to have tried to be original. I tried and I failed.

Great audiences in Leeds, I don’t know why. I’ve always loved playing here. This lot carry me through a difficult night. I am very grateful to them. Afterwards I head straight for the hotel and bump into some early leavers on the street. I take a photo of myself with a woman’s phone. I think I get her in it. The world is slowly drowning in photographs. Human-like creatures will excavate Earth billennia after our…—More Tales

Sale, February 18th 2013

What is Sale? I’m here, in Sale, I’m walking through its – what are they, streets? but I can’t determine what it is. Is it a town, a suburb or an industrial service zone? There are homes and businesses of every sort – built in every decade of the last one hundred and fifty years – a seventies high-street, a revamped canal and a futuristic multi-storey car-park. The Arts Centre is new but it’s stuck to a town hall which was perhaps built in the nineteen-thirties. It is a mad conglomeration, strewn haphazardly about some ancient snake-pit of a street plan. It is so odd and uncategorizable it’s almost charming. I feed some pita bread to the ducks and pigeons at the canal as we wait for get-in. I try to be equitable. I don’t wish to exhibit any favouritism.

Between soundcheck and show we check-in to our Manchester city centre…—More Tales

Newbury, February 17th 2013

We strike out from Stamford at noon to watch the milky light angling onto to the extremely pretty undulating Rutland countryside. In spite of what you see from the van on most tours, England, with its cosy rustic beauty, is preserved in a great many places. Living in these areas might just turn you Tory, for modernity must seem a menace encroaching on all this pastoral glory. But we’re heading for Corby, that Scot infested industrial cauldron so normal service will be resumed. English and Scottish patriotism sow their seeds in the rural landscape. It’s a way of encapsulating a myth – the place maketh the people. As if a fucking heather covered hill has any bearing on most Scots’ character. Nationalists are great manipulators of imagery. They tell you that your inherent virtues are bound to your country’s natural beauty in order to parcel off power for themselves. It’s…—More Tales

Stamford, February 15th 2013

I have lurched from the desert to the frozen north. Leaving the Gulf last week I had visions of handbags on fire, buried minions dug up and displayed in future museums. These men died building towers now ruined, airports since vanished beneath the sea of sand. Emirs, Sultans and Kings: born to rule over those selected to serve. I played pretend palaces and Vegas-style hotels. I served my sorry time. I bought some fags, came home and torched some Camels. We’re burning up the world.

Scotland is shining under a flat white disc of sun. Stray patches of snow streak the bluffs atop which fresh ranges of turbines flower, turning in slow motion. Driving south we see a black military transport plane veer around the corner of a gorge like a fleeing vampire. Nestled off the road lies some sort of rocket launcher taking practice pot-shots. Nobody has a job but…—More Tales

Austin, Day Nineteen

Last day. I’m still dicking about with last little vocal things. A very nice tall man called Bruce comes in to do some backing vocals with me. He’s a good natural singer and just the ticket. It’s just one simple part but having another voice helps a lot. He’s a songwriter but it’s difficult to track down his work on the web as he shares a name with Bruce Robinson, the British director of Withnail & I and the recent very underrated The Rum Diary. I get distracted by a highly entertaining interview with the director from a 2011 issue of the Independent. He tells a story about when he was drinking five bottles of wine a day and he ran out. He got in his car and as he was driving to the nearest off-licence noticed in his mirror some prick in a silver van hanging on his tail-lights.…—More Tales

Austin, Day Eighteen

Iain Harvie from Del Amitri once commented that to the uninitiated it must appear as if nothing actually happens in a recording studio. Ninety percent of the time they are sepulchrally quiet places with no discernible activity going on. There’s a lot of waiting, a fair bit of listening and very little performing. Outside of the control room, studios are desolate environments; pianos sit unplayed, microphones hang like dead flowers on their stands and the walls resound with nothing but the hush of the air conditioning with the occasional muted thump of a drum part drifting from beyond the double glass. There is the odd flurry of industry – when the whole band is laying down initial tracks or a string or brass section shuffle into their positions. But there is far more music going on in the external environment: radios in cars, MP3s squawking away in every bar, shop…—More Tales

Austin, Day Seventeen

Monday. Three days to go till I get on that plane that takes me to the plane that takes me home. I arrive but there’s no one at the bunker so after waiting I take a drive to find a bag somewhere to throw my laundry in and over my shoulder but the luggage emporium suggested by Apple’s new map application doesn’t exist. Unless its an underground luggage shop dug beneath somebody’s clapboard house. Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to find.

I return to find David (Dah-veed; no Day-vid, he) with an electric guitar strapped around his neck plugged into a DI-ed Mesa Boogie via an Echoplex, a groovy little tape loop delay machine which has featured heavily so far on everything from upright bass to Moog. I make room by making coffee. I used to revel in my role of principal tea maker in the studio. I was…—More Tales

Austin, Day Sixteen

Sunday, and I have a breakfast engagement with my landlady and her son, Hugo. Hugo has been running and needs a shower so the landlady and I take her tandem downtown to the restaurant while he catches us up in his car. Yes, a tandem. It’s downhill most of the way and it’s a beautiful day for a bike ride. We pedal through a fragrant little grove, the path lined with wildflowers. I am inappropriately dressed and begin to perspire profusely. I am a Sweaty Sock – a Jock on a bike for two. I do the eggs Benedict thing, (the joke goes: what’s the connection between eggs Benedict and a blow job? They’re both really good but you never seem to be able to get them at home. Sexist in every conceivable way. Personally, I frequently make eggs Benedict at home) and then check out the bookshop opposite. I…—More Tales

Austin, Day Fifteen

After sleeping late and patronising one of my breakfast haunts I sit down and make a playlist to take to Zilker Park for a wander. I try to find a zone in which to sun myself but am frustrated by frisbee golfers, vehicular traffic and at one point, a nest of biting ants which I manage to sit on under a convenient tree. I come up in those white bumps you get with histamine reaction like that from nettle stings. The music in the headphones maintains that pleasant sense of travelling unnoticed through the world like a movie camera, insulated and separate. Cat Power’s Manhattan with its piano octaves, drum machine and snare fills is the hit of the day. I go down to Barton Springs to watch the swimmers. I see a man in a posing pouch and man-bra strutting by below me. I bet that cunt’s here every…—More Tales

Austin, Day Fourteen

It was a relatively late one last night, battering away at a vocal comp with Mr. McC. Remarkably, it sounded good in the morning so we had somehow managed not to lose the plot, which is encouraging. I drove downtown to a 24-hour diner afterwards and sat at the bar. Corned-beef hash and eggs, root beer. The joint was filled with twenty-somethings in their chunky spectacles and carefully distressed T-shirts all gabbing away with enthusiasm while a string of loners like myself sat reading free-sheets on our bar stools. The night had cooled significantly with the narrowest sliver of a crescent moon sailing over the city in a sideways smile.

The sun comes angling through the trees straight into my eyes in the morning. I tune into Radio 4 on my phone, six hours ahead and as prissy as always. The tribulations of Gideon Osborne and the Tory overlords seem petty and…—More Tales

Austin, Day Thirteen

I decide to investigate a new morning venue. These are the critical choices I have to fret over. In a funky vinyl slash coffee shop I am greeted by Craig, a man in his early fifties with long grey hair and a Texan drawl, who is charm personified. He is the epitome of southern ease. He volunteers the intimate details of his life with no hint of self-obsessiveness and enquires after mine without nosiness or suspicion. He has that Texan air of gentlemanliness which mixes grace with a wry mischief. You immediately like him and relax. He’s an ex state employee turned quality caterer. We gossip about Withered Hand which is a pleasant surprise and he talks about his son, who is late for his shift at the shop. The big seventies stereo in the corner belches mellifluous country music with a brew of irony and love. He pours me…—More Tales

Austin, Day Twelve

Monday is just beautiful. If summer days in Glasgow were like this I’d start believing in God. So thank fuck they’re damp and freezing because that would be a chore. Not to say deeply embarrassing.

There are some large chestnut type objects falling from the trees around here, somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a tennis ball. They hit the tin roof of my bedroom with a wet thud and roll off sounding not unlike a squirrel beheading. I have yet to be hit by one. I calculate the odds as being fairly slim so will regard it as extraordinary good fortune should I be struck. Only then will I bother to find out what they are.

Monday and Tuesday are listening days, figuring out some edits and mutes and what remains to be overdubbed. Things sound good, things sound American and that is the desired outcome. I hear…—More Tales

Austin, Days Nine to Eleven

I start off with a little saunter through the pleasant morning heat down to the no-nonsense taco place that’s becoming my breakfast local. The migas is my thing. Scrambled egg with two kinds of cheese, lots of coriander and salsa on top of a fried taco for two bucks and change. No doubt Mexican food is so inexpensive here due to cheap imported labour. In the west, when something is cheap you can be sure somebody’s getting fucked somewhere. Think of all the missing fingers and blighted lives resulting from those disposable clothes you buy in Primark. Don’t even mention smartphones. We’re living in a science-fiction dystopia which has, remarkably, become reality. Modern living. The repeated shafting of the billions-strong underclass by the wealthy few. It’s a gas.

More overdubs today. Some Moog, upright piano and double bass. Some of this stuff is starting to get weird in an excellent way.…—More Tales

Austin, Day Eight

I take a walk around the little golf course in the sultry tropical morning. I’d say run, but running’s for twats and George Bush. When White-Knucklehead was in power he used to complain when he couldn’t get enough fucking running in. Like it was more important than slaughter and race-war. He just couldn’t face a long day’s killing without a jog around a ranch with his goons. Stupid little man.
I drive to south Austin to find a boot store. The last pair of cowboy boots I had were bought in El Paso, Texas in 1990. I feel I ought to make it a 22 year tradition, like acts of altruism and anal sex.
As I am scoffing breakfast at a taco trailer I hear my name shouted. I don’t turn around but years ago I would have done and have been sure it was somebody I knew. There are too many…—More Tales

Austin, Day Seven

Back in the bunker after a gruelling session on Monday. Multiple takes and a lot of singing. It takes me back. I haven’t worked like this since I was a young man. I am no longer any kind of young and I’m wrecked by nine at night. It’s a beautiful cool night, the Milky Way is faintly visible and I drive around until I find a hippy co-operative where I buy some dried up sushi to drag home and club to death in my cave. My nightly treat is a bottle of root beer; that medicinal elixir that’s so redolent of old-time USA. I take my repast watching John Boorman’s mad Point Blank on the computer. Then I watch Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross on YouTube on my phone. Both films have brilliant, grim, pessimistic endings. I’m going to watch The Werkmeister Harmonies tonight on the microwave.

Me and the band wait…—More Tales

Austin, Day Six

The cold front is sitting over Texas like despair in a geriatric ward. I take a wander round my new neighbourhood, crossing a public golf course and meandering through the plush university campus ending up on the fringes of downtown. It’s early and there’s hardly a soul about. It’s a relief to be walking. I buy a New York Times and dive into a local diner. Standard fare – eggs and burgers – but seemingly run by an academic lesbian co-op. They’re all very friendly and pretty in a geeky way and I feel as if I am on the set of one of those awful post-modern sitcoms. In the last two nights I have managed to watch – or rather, witness – two of the worst comedies I have ever seen; The Dictator and The Sitter. The latter is perhaps the less excruciating but it’s repulsive sentimentality is unforgivable.…—More Tales

Austin, Day Five

No shirt, no shoes, no service. I take breakfast without my trousers with impunity amongst the Saturday hipsters in Julio’s Mexican again as I can’t be bothered driving around aimlessly searching for a café. The promised cold front has arrived but I’m still in shirtsleeves. You’d be pretty satisfied with this temperature at the height of summer in Scotland. I sit at a table on the patio affecting a sophisticated air with my Austin American-Statesman which is a useless rag really but preferable to the soul-draining inanity of USA Today. If I’m honest I kind of need a jacket. Americans call suit jackets coats and for some irrational reason this always irritates me. And waistcoats are vests. So here you’re pretty dapper in a vest and coat whereas in the UK you’d look like you’d stepped out of a Duran Duran video from 1982. A coat and a vest. Jesus…—More Tales

Austin, Day Four

There is a mercifully cool breeze in the air today. I drop into a hipster coffee shop on the way to the studio where a fracas erupts between an ornery customer and an uptight barista. I notice the background music is some absurd industrial noise art-wank that sounds like a fucking bombing raid on a battery chicken farm. Not exactly conducive to civilised coffee consumption. No wonder the old guy with the wraparounds and handlebar moustache had “an attitude”. The fucking music has an attitude. Everyone looks a little sheepish. I notice the customers ahead of me tip the barista conspicuously in an effort to placate her. Buying cooperation and compliance, like western diplomacy.

I have the morning off while the piano is being tuned at Mr. McC’s. I nose around some vintage shops and buy a few old shirts to supplement my vanishing supply of clean stuff. It’s so hot…—More Tales

Austin, Day Three

Again I surface suddenly from slumber at stupid o’clock. Too long flipping through the late night talk shows. What a strange thing they are. I watch Craig Ferguson, a fellow Glaswegian who kindly had me on his show on my last album more through regional loyalty than anything. His show stands out from the others but I can’t put my finger on why. There’s a genuine anarchy vibrating under the surface. You have the feeling he might just go utterly ape at any point. He’s a tightly coiled lunatic held in check by the sobriety of the slick showbiz format. It’s like watching Godzilla prune a bonsai.

I attend to electronic chores to kill off the early morning. Computers and phones swallow time like black holes. Later I take a drive around to find supplies and sustenance. Listerine and tacos – breakfast of champions.

We spend another day footering with the songs…—More Tales

In Austin, Day One

In the morning my brain cracks into consciousness like a flicked switch. 7am. What to do? I peer out of the sealed tinted window and attempt to orientate myself by dabbing and swiping at my phone map. Downtown juts up to the south like a distant promise. The immediate environs are hideously nondescript. Parking lots, freeways and motels. It’s a typical American scene. I walk to an IHOP* and indulge in its dubious charms. My waitress, battle-hardened from years of service, divorce and disappointment, regurgitates pleasantries on auto-pilot. I am coffee and orange juice and I’m over easy. The place is full of working types, which is reassuring for some reason. You get the feeling somehow that the punters are for Obama but the staff are a bit more Romney. I could be wrong.

This afternoon I am to rendezvous with the producer. I am a little nervous about it having only…—More Tales

To Austin

So I’m sitting in a rocking chair in Philadelphia airport staring out into the airfield. There’s a colony of them by the big window, all white, facing out to the horizon. Rocking chairs, that is. Travellers and staff on breaks sit and lap up the light like passengers on the rear deck of a liner. I have cleared immigration and have an ocean of hours to waste waiting for my connection, southbound and westward to Austin in the vast state of Texas. Behind us busybodies pass wittering on mobile phones. The polished floor reflects the motion of wheeled cases gliding across the concourse in a great waltz. Everybody has somewhere to get to with their cache of stuff, the same stuff in every bag. I am perfectly still for the while, apart from the occasional, comforting little rock.

Aboard I watch from my porthole the baggage handler tossing luggage from a…—More Tales

SHOCKING NEW CARTOONS OF JESUS, MOHAMMED AND GARY BARLOW

—More Rants/Slates

It’s US and we’re Open

For all the moaning minnie Scots who have been telling me the man’s a wimp, a choker, has no guts , no stamina and will never win a Slam.

You were wrong.

We are now open for business.

You’re wonderful, Mr. Murray.—More Rants/Slates

All Things Bright and Beautiful

If singing thirty seconds of a song in a church is hooliganism motivated by religious hatred then what the fuck is a hymnary other than a list of specific terrorist instructions? Go forth and multiply and do God’s work. By the way, He fucking HATES Jews, Muslims, Fags and Philistines, OK? He just likes a bit of order, you know? No fuss, everyone the same, knowing their place, worshiping whatever keeps them happy. Off you go, defend the faith. You might need one of these – an AK47 or a judicial system with unchecked power operating in the interest of a secret state.—More Rants/Slates

No, Surrender (Part Two)

http://youtu.be/FWVCpvVR9KU—More Motion-sickness

No, Surrender (Part One)

http://youtu.be/Ppket7R_BjI—More Motion-sickness

Her Majesty Salutes Hoy’s Band of Spacemen

http://youtu.be/NZlbiNAsfM4

In her tireless promotion of brand Britain, the Queen imparts her trademark enthusiasm.—More Motion-sickness

Guardian Tour Diary 1997

I wrote this piece for The Guardian in 1997 (I think) and received a fair amount of flak from US fans for its sneering tone. I can see their point but I was trying to be sympathetic to them while undermining the rock-star persona by being honest. I probably got it wrong, but it’s a document of its time so here it is in its original form before the G2 editors got their (rather capable) claws into it. 

One Week on the Wheel of Pain: How to Brownnose with Impunity

Monday, Arrival

You plane, you deplane. You’re a foreigner, a form-filler, you’re a hasn’t been who might be in the land of the wannabe. You have come here, willing and supine, ready to wear the promo smile for the people, to sing your song for the sake of the sell. Live on-air, live in-store, a week of grease on the week of release,…—More Tales

Day Off, London

We plough into the seedy thicket of north London. I scramble from the hotel after installing my family of chargers in my white box. I take a pleasant line downhill from Angel through Finsbury, Clarkenwell, Smithfield and the City to the river. My walk traces a line of affluence from the self-conscious cafés and vintage home decor boutiques at the top of the hill to the terrifying marble fortresses of the City at sea-level. I don’t know this part of the capital so I take pleasure exploring the grand residential squares and sampling the weird vibe around the fringes of the financial district at 5pm. City boys in bespoke deep navy suits with tieless sky-blue shirts loiter outside corner pubs in cabals of threes and fours. They’re mostly in their early thirties and beautifully coiffed and manicured. The women are whippet thin and dress in black and meander alone through…—More Tales

North to Wolverhampton

There are swimmers in the sea!

The Brighton beach backwash rakes the pebbles down into the seabed with that sound like rattling teeth. French air caresses the coast with the faint scent of baguette or bag-lady. A long gloomy front hangs along the coast down to the west where Land’s End points its bony toe at South America. We guide the Merc north through beautiful oak studded estates, headed for the Black Country, its wide accents, ex-factories and gap-toothed high streets. I was a Midlands boy in the seventies. I had a Leicestershire accent, played for the school team, said “lickoll bockoll” for “little bottle”, drank Dandelion and Burdock. I was a hayseed, temporarily English. I loved Leicestershire. I loved our village. Cows sometimes wandered onto the school football pitch, badgers rooted around the garden at night. We had two apple trees, cherry and almond trees, a lean-to, an enormous ash…—More Tales

Day Off, Bristol

I’m in a Radisson Blu which is a good thing. Twelfth floor with spiffy decor and big windows. I have a tiny silver kettle with the word “distinction” written on it. I have two kinds of tissues and a desk and chair set painted gold. I am a modern man in my modern box and nobody can take it away from me. Not for 48 hours. We rush out to catch the high drama of English football’s final instalment. An enormous wall of a man sitting in front of me seems tense. After City win he reveals that he’d placed £1,500 on their victory. The bookies call this buying money – laying large sums on very short odds. A fucking idiot’s game. He screws up his copy of the Sunday Sun in anxiety during the match when City go 2-1 down. I could tell straight away he wasn’t watching the…—More Tales

South to Lincoln

I awake to a bright morning and shovel my various accoutrements into my black nylon trolley. Everywhere there are people in transit dragging these recalcitrant cases out for a walk. You see them in suburban streets and parks and town centres as if hanging onto weary toddlers, the little plastic wheels making that gargling noise over the concrete. Strange that the ancient invention of the wheel came so late to luggage. Even in the early nineties I was still hefting an enormous sack around on my shoulders from airport to tour-bus. On long US tours I used to carry two big holdalls, one purely for underwear. Why ruin a precious day off sitting in a laundromat when you can take three months’ worth of socks on the road? Since the World Trade Centre fell you’d be lucky to get a few weeks of keks on a plane without handing over…—More Tales

On to Holmfirth

In the morning I race over Buxton’s pretty park set on a hill to hunt down the bookshop Derek has told me about. There is a swirl of slanting rain so I buy a wooly hat from an outdoor suppliers on the way. The bookshop is well-stocked over three storeys and has a few quirks. There’s a make-your-own tea and coffee set-up on the fiction floor alongside a large soft-toy tiger who lounges on a chaise long in the bay window. Unfortunately there is also a nausea inducing “snogging corner – adults only” sign hanging above a nook, but everybody makes mistakes. I am pushed for time and buy a George Eliot novel I’m fairly sure I’ll never open. I liked the first page so it’s mine for six quid. The owner, who is sorting through some old scores (and settling them) asks me if I can spell Tchaikovsky. I…—More Tales

Down to Buxton

Head for the hills, boys. Low pressure is upon us; there is no sky, or at least there is but it’s resting on the street. The cloud is so low the rain starts falling at shoulder height. Get on your knees and you’re in a puddle of mist. I’m shuffling around the Middlesborough grid again in a dank and dismal way, looking for a morning coffee. I sample the Fakey Noir ambience – friendly staff, pitiful music. But at least it’s not Starfucks. I duck into a music shop and the proprietor recognises me. My former band were regulars at the City Hall here. He and I stroke rather than shoot the breeze then I breezily take my leave.

Derek Meins, the majestic opener, meets us at our hotel. His guest house turned out to be an empty family house for which he was handed the keys. In the morning he…—More Tales

East to Stockton

We move out through Widnes’s motley sprawl under jets sailing into John Lennon. We gain the motorway and all signs of locality vanish, the endless stream of vehicles hypnotic and stultifying. We are now five having picked up Dave, the sound man and Derek, the opening act at Runcorn railway station. Luminous fields of rape rim the verges, the sky is strewn with smoky puffs stretched in formation beneath some high white sheet. Our satellite lady huskily intones instructions. We remain, as ever, in her wayward hands. A church spire looms like a rocket in a thicket of blast-off trees. The van’s occupants fidget at phones, thumbs like busy mandibles mangling insect words. The air is filled with them – look you! Death threats, appointment arrangements, compliments, football scores – thrown into the roar of the universe.

The last time I was in Stockton I ventured with some frands (that’s fans…—More Tales

The Road to Runcorn

The British spring is a mad mood swing of a thing. Warm, hot, cold, warm, cold, colder. The light lacks confidence and slants experimentally through the atmosphere like a cat dipping a cautious paw in a dubious pond. We bottom feeders are on our way to Runcorn on the Mersey in a Mercedes Benz that has no name. I would christen it if it weren’t so characterless and the christening of vehicles a sickness of the mind.

Pylons pass huffing on a hill with their angry arms, like the skeletal remains of Modern Toss’s Alan. The western Scots must pass through several little cauldrons of mountains before the descent into flat Lancashire. Squat pines line the verges as the M-way dips and arcs through gentle glens with great elegance. The lanes are wide and empty. It’s an easy introduction to the road before the rage and rattle of packed tight England.…—More Tales

This is a football.

And this is what a football looks like. There is nothing stuck to it; no hair or gold or teeth. It carries no messages and whispers only rushing air. All the players may touch it with their hands but feet are more effective. It longs to be caressed and dreams of coming to a spinning stop and settling at the junction of net and turf. The football is our friend. Somebody wants to burst it with a biro pen, somebody has written his name all over it with a silver marker. It has become tawdry and vulgar, a candy-coated Kruggerand. Take off your fucking ties and get down in the dirt. This is what a football looks like.—More Tales

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS ANT?

Answers to the name “Binky”. Will come when called. Do not feed E numbers.

Call: 0141 729 01482

Please, please – if you have seen Binky, get in touch. Small token rewarded for safe return. Must have original legs.—More Untruths

He danced like a junkie muppet undergoing electrocution.

Still missed by all who witnessed his crazy fistfights with the air.—More Rants/Slates

REPUGNANT POWER-PEOPLE APPLAUD REPELLENT RELIC OF HISTORY WHILST TITTERING AND CRINGING SICKENINGLY. GOD, SAVAGE THE QUEEN.

http://youtu.be/XwbWAQjvCss

This really makes a man gag: the chumminess, the reverence and the snivelling obeisance. All hail the unelected Head of State! For she’s a jolly good fellow…

—More Motion-sickness

Confessional, from the side of the mouth

I live in a house with a cat and some ants. Everyone is sated.

I went to my local church and was refused service. I waved my baggy genitals at the man in the frock. The birds whistled a song of acceptance. God peed himself. Everyone went home.

The record shop is overflowing with films. We need more gun shops that sell heroin. We need more live butchery. We need rock and roll salvation.

Spring is arriving and the days creep into evenings. Buses without headlights, women without tights. See the sun arc higher and higher into the northwest. The comedians are coming to town. Pale footballers redden, the lollipop men blush in glinting afternoons. I know where they hide their glossy magazines.

If I really thought about my life I’d redeem myself. I’d take matters in hand. But I wear blinkers, muffs and a face-mask. I watch the world weaken through yellow eyes.…—More Untruths

Ten Twitter posts I recommend to the attention-starved modern celebrity guaranteed to generate some heat.

1. “Michael Jackson fucked me in the mouth when I was thirteen and I enjoyed it.”

2. “Our soldiers are cowards – even the dead ones.”

3. “Killing or maiming children with brown skin is justifiable if it secures energy supplies to liberal democracies.”

4. “All Olympic Games competitors should be shot in the head before each event.”

5. “I wish the Real IRA would blow up Margaret Thatcher’s offspring.”

6. “Anal rape must be permissable if it serves to get Bruce Springsteen to shut the fuck up.”

7. “Religion operates like dysentery. It renders its host incapacitated and is communicated via their consequent torrent of faeces.”

8. “I’ve had sex with both of my parents.” *

9. “I get an erection every time I see a crucifix.”

10. “I just had a brilliant kiwi and apple smoothie. And now I’m going to torture a prostitute.”

* Russell Brand may already have said this, I’m not sure.—More Untruths

My Soul Is Stolen

http://youtu.be/Cmf5DTypcZg—More Motion-sickness

Can’t Let Go Of Her Now

http://youtu.be/QAswTXifo6I—More Motion-sickness

A Man With Nothing To Do

http://youtu.be/IIjDBUl4YnU—More Motion-sickness

You’ll Always Walk Alone

http://youtu.be/-VfStJ2tyFw—More Motion-sickness

Little Stars, Live at Mrs.Craig’s House

http://youtu.be/CNMnSBwQotw—More Motion-sickness

Every Song’s The Same, Live at Mrs.Craig’s House

http://youtu.be/tCh4vBR1Zls—More Motion-sickness

A Man With Nothing to Do

The lovers of the world are slaving away

But I do nothing much but breathe

When good men do nothing, it’s true what they say

The devil is rolling up his sleeve

Is God, so busy in his time, now doing nothing too?

So baby, here I am, waiting for you

A man with nothing to do

Let the years go by, let the daylight die

I can’t think of anything to be

The planes in the sky, the lines in the road

Human hands make everything you see

And if you keep busy in your mind do you think you’ll see this through?

So baby, here I am, waiting for you

A man with nothing to do

I’m a man with nothing to do

I don’t tend the fields, I don’t toil at the sea

So I am passing the time by letting time pass over me

So are you so busy in your mind that you can’t feel it too?

So baby, here I am, waiting…—More Sword

Anywhere I’m Away from You

When I’m away from home I do as the locals do

But baby, now I’m in Rome I can’t remember you

Did you used to cut me down, did you use to bury me?

Praise God for the errors of my memory

Whatever I’m coming to I ain’t running home

Cos home is anywhere, anywhere I’m away from you

Out on the road you find invisibility

And the beauty of an empty mind is its tranquility

And if the past comes up and dogs my day

I can take it on a little trip and lose it in the empty space

Whatever I’m coming to I ain’t running home

Cos home is anywhere, anywhere I’m away from you

So, baby if you want me back you don’t have to do a thing

Just stare at the wall as you always do hating everything

And I’ll come flooding back and you can treasure me

With your heart like rock and your mind so black butcher my…—More Sword

At Home Inside Of Me

Crows capturing buildings and rats camped in a drain

Fireflies caught and cannoned in the rain

Seams of secret people awaiting the shafts that set them free

They make themselves a home inside of me

Armies of children and ghosts of suffragettes

Make merry in the cauldron of my chest

Bodies dumped in ditches and stowaways at sea

They make themselves a home inside of me

They make themselves a home inside of me

A fist-fight at a wedding, a killing on the stairs

The brilliant spark at the start of love affairs

Your tenderness’s blessing and your assassin’s accuracy

They make themselves a home inside of me

 —More Sword

You’ll Always Walk Alone

Lying asleep at night under the watching ceiling light

Safe in the fortress of your home

Remember you’ll always walk alone

When you’re swooning at the sinking sun

With that special girl you string along

And from the shore you throw another stone

Remember you’ll always walk alone

Walk alone through your life and into the night

You will always walk alone

Arm in arm and hand in hand, tied together with a wedding band

Tethered to the line between the phones

Remember you’ll always walk alone

Walk alone through your life and into the night

You will always walk alone

And alone every night you walk through my mind

There we go, you and I in tandem all the time

Our cover’s blown, now it’s all talk

How you always walk alone

 —More Sword

Can’t Let Go Of Her Now

She’s made her mark on me, she’s scarred my memory

Made shallow wounds in the depth of night

Give up my liberty, that’s what she wants from me

Well, I guess I’d care but it feels alright

And if I lose my grip I won’t make it anyhow

So I can’t let go of her now

She makes my common sense come out like self-defence

She breaks my patience like a match

And when I snap in half she’ll be the first to laugh

If I’m a base hit, she’s a catch

And if I lose my grip I won’t make it anyhow

So I can’t let go of her now

Just don’t tell her I would die if I let her slip away

Let her think I’m resigned

Like those drying clothes just hang onto the line

She’s made her mark on me, those little lines you can see

They’re written through me like a poem

She makes a mockery of all I hold life to…—More Sword

The Fight to Be Human

I’m not a master of what I survey

To death and disaster I am a slave

But I am the author of the words that I say

Why do I bother – it’s all trash anyway

I try to be truthful, or I think that I try

I may not be useful but at least I’m alive

Millions of letters spilled into the hive

All of them worthless except for this line

I hate the world they gave me

I hate the world they gave me

I stand on a mountain of pitiful prose

My mind is a fountain that pointlessly flows

They give you a trophy if you make the kids scream

But it’s such a joke to me how insipid I’ve been

I hate the world they gave me

I hate the world they gave me

I dig into my past now, I dig into my wrist

To recapture the last time I felt the knife twist

I kick at the shackles and heave at the…—More Sword

Ready To Be

Ready To Be

Praise heaven, babe, it’s still alive

A good man’s just a great disguise

Look down deep in his eyes you’ll see

And your friends who say I’m bad

Why don’t you tell them all you’ve been had

Why don’t you tell them what I am is what they see

Cos I’m ready to be the devil they’ve been seeing in me

Look closer it’s still alight

That ain’t a twinkle that you see at night

Ask me again if I think they’re right, you’ll see

Cos I’m ready to be the devil they’ve been seeing in me

Whatever they’ve been seeing, I know him

He lives between the moments, when I’m an angel in silence

He’s climbing over the railway fence

Trying to dispose of the evidence

Trying to compose it so it all makes sense

Trying to get ready to be, ready to be

The devil they’ve been seeing in me

 —More Sword

The Way That It Falls

Life is wonderful, you love the days till you’re dead and gone,

The pleasures lived in the light, but I love the night, the shapes it solves

And the way that it falls, the way that it falls

And she loves everyone, so I let her burn in the sun

And then trick her into a fight, cos I love the night, the spills and squalls

And the way that it falls, the way that it falls

Falling through the morning, falling through all of space

To wipe the sunlight from her face

Like the shadow falling in this place

Life is wonderful, you hog the heat till the fire cools

And you hold on as though it’s your right, and dread the night’s

Enclosing walls

And the way that it falls, the way that it falls

—More Sword

As Long As You Don’t Come Back

Well, I’m talking to myself not you so don’t get mad

Cos I need a friend who won’t talk back

And he is letting me finally see some sense

And I know I should be mending fences but why would I do that?

When I won’t feel alone as long as you don’t come back

And I know that you’ll be picking through the bones of me

Trying to find a heart of stone

Well, if it’s there throw it at my picture

Cos I know I should be building bridges but why would I do that?

When I won’t feel alone as long as you don’t come back

Don’t come back, don’t come round crying

Whatever the angle, I ain’t buying

Whatever the accent you’ve been trying

So I’m talking to myself not you and it ain’t so bad

At least I don’t put myself down

And sometimes I even sound like you

And I know I should be making amends but why would I…—More Sword

Everyone I Love

Tonight I’m gonna hurt everyone I love just to see if they love me

I’m gonna run around running off my mouth, be as cruel as I can be

Tonight I’m gonna hurt everyone I love, give my bitter side a little exercise

Let my loathing out for a walkabout, give my jealousy a little company

Tonight I’m gonna hurt everyone I love,

Cos I’m tired of trying to keep this stuff inside of me

Tonight I’m gonna say what I never say, I’m taking everybody down

Like Dr. Frankenstein I’ll let the monster walk from the cellar to the town

Tonight I’m gonna say what I never say, every negative I can hit them with,

Every accolade’ll be a hand grenade, let my mission be catastrophe,

Tonight I’m gonna hurt everyone I love,

Cos I wanna wreck what everyone expects from me

Tonight I’m gonna hurt everyone I love just to see if they love me

I’m gonna blow apart the phoney…—More Sword

Baby, You Survived

Baby, can’t you cry, or is she ain’t letting you?

That eyelash in your eye ain’t what’s upsetting you

Though she’s dead and out of sight

She still throws your shoes across your room at night

And she still says you’re cheap and in your sleep sets the sheets alight

So baby, don’t you cry, she ain’t worth it, and besides,

You’re too old for lullabies

So baby, don’t you sink back down that corridor

Take a breath and think what you’ve been running for

Cos she can’t help you now

All she can do is sulk around your house

And show up in your eyes when you’re surprised that you’re happy now

So be glad and proud, cos, baby, you’re allowed

And her shadow disappears when you shine a light down the years

And torch that hallway of souvenirs

So lately you and I have spoken of marrying

So it’s time to say goodbye to that bag of broken things you’re carrying

Cos this time you…—More Sword

What Is Love For

What is love for? Does it wash good people ashore,

Does it keep the wolf from the door, what is love for?

What does love do, does it make life worth going through,

Keep you safe from the suicide crew, what does love do?

What is love for, who does it help?

A one-eyed king that leads everything straight into hell.

What is love for, what does it change?

Did Joan of Arc drag anyone back from history’s flames?

What does love do, does it  favour a fortunate few,

Does it step on the hearts it can’t use, what does love do?

What does love make but twenty billion perfect mistakes

Trying to figure what they can take, what does it make?

What is love for, who does it help?

A one-eyed king that leads everything straight into hell.

What is love for, what does it change?

Did Joan of Arc drag anyone back from history’s flames?

What is love for, what is love for?

What do…—More Sword

Not So Sentimental Now (Currie)

Pick up your shit and my shit too

Don’t need a T.V. to stare at or those pretty clothes to glare at

That you never put on anyhow

‘Cos baby, I’m not so sentimental now

Out with the old, out with the new

If there’s a trinket worth keeping you’d better get it while I’m sleeping

‘Cos baby, I’m not so sentimental now

Don’t think because I loved so hard

I can’t be hard when the hating starts

So take your wounded out

‘Cos I’m not so sentimental now

Take everything, take what you see

The vitamins, the drawing pins, the covers you’ve been lying in to me,

Yeh, take a bow

‘Cos baby, I’m not so sentimental now.—More Sword

Walking Through You (Currie)

In the evening when you’re blue you will feel me walking through you

When you’re crying, that’s my cue, my reminding walking through you

When you’re singing something true I’ll be listening walking through you

And those memories that you lose I can find them walking through you

When you dance and your baby’s dancing too

Then I will walk through you

In the windows in the views there’s a shadow walking through you

When you’re cold, when you’re cruel, that’s my sorrow walking through you

When you wake in the silence of your room

Then I will walk through you

—More Sword

Something In That Mess

Sometimes I love you, sometimes I hate you

I know you struggle too, it’s in your nature

‘Cos you and I were never meant to be together

But you took off your dress

And something in that mess got changed forever

Some days a breakthrough, some days a breakdown

When I fall out of love you meet me on the way down

‘Cos you and I were never meant to be together

But you took off your dress

And something in that mess got changed forever

Forever, stains and scratches written on the leather

And when the sun comes slanting in I swear it’s raining feathers

And I can’t find myself among this stuff we’ve thrown together

‘Cos somewhere here a shirt of mine is twisted in the arms of your sweater

Sometimes I love you, sometimes I hate you

I know that you do too, it’s in your nature

‘Cos you and I were never meant to be together

But you took off your dress

And something…—More Sword

If I Ever Loved You

Baby, I was not the one

I guess you know that now

But I kept you real distracted for a while.

I look back and nothing much

Ever comes to mind

Sometimes I can picture half a smile

We were thick as thieves

Hung on each others sleeves

Kissing all the time

But if I ever loved you shouldn’t I be crying

Shouldn’t I be cracking up

And drinking all the time?

Yeah,if I ever loved you how come I feel alright

How come the nights are so easy

And the mornings look so bright?

I try to figure what has gone

I seem to look the same

Maybe there’s a tightness around my eyes

Sometimes the evening comes

I think I miss someone

And then I realise

That if I ever loved you shouldn’t I be crying

Shouldn’t I be cracking up

And drinking all the time?

Yeah,if I ever loved you how come I feel alright

How come the nights are so easy

And the mornings look so bright?

Love it can make your world

Bring…—More Sword

Only Love

Only love makes killing time so cruel

The hours come and you drag them round with you

When she is gone the whole hangdog house aches

And you hum along to the sound of heartbreaks

You think you hear in every song

But only love will make you wait so long

For the little gifts that keep you holding on

A scribbled ring round the town she’s staying in,

The little dent in the bed you’re laying in,

The heady scent she leaves on you

But only love makes killing time so cruel

So many things that you must get round to;

A dripping tap, a month’s mail to sort through

If you could just get your mind to clear

But it’s only love and it keeps you waiting here—More Sword

Gold Dust

The thing that makes your eyes glitter isn’t always gold dust

The wings you think life’s given you they couldn’t lift a bread crust

A siren in the sky calls my body home

The last remaining high leaves me lowdown and alone

And maps of where you are can be found in every bar

Where those cosy little homilies hang

The thing that makes your eyes glitter isn’t always gold dust

The wings you think life’s given you they couldn’t lift a bread crust

The confidence of kings leaches from my hands

Where jupiter did sing a drunken janitor now stands

To figure who you are you look in every single car

Where they stick those tired sideways looks at life

The thing that makes your eyes glitter isn’t always gold dust

The wings you think life’s given you they couldn’t lift a bread crust

Alone; that ain’t the word

It’s just a groan in the morning nobody ever heard

—More Sword

Out Of My Control

Once I get my heart back in my hand

I’ll squeeze out every drop of love I can

To rid myself of you, I want with all my soul

But what I want is out of my control

All I’d have to do is fool around

Drag out this old carcass on the town

I know how it is done, just shake the dice and roll

But what I want is out of my control

Why can’t I free myself, climb out of this hole

Deep inside you have taken hold

I try, try, try but every time I just find

It’s out of my control

Twenty planes they leave the runway every day

Taking yet another chance away

I could cut and run, take half what makes me whole

But what I want is out of my control—More Sword

Where Did I Go?

I loved to hurt you without you ever knowing

I could desert you without you ever seeing me going

All the monsters in your nightmares showed

You could see me underneath my cloak –

Do you know, do you know?

Baby, where did I go?

In the mornings, baby, right before you woke

I would ask things that I never spoke –

Does she know, does she know?

Baby, where did I go?

Maybe I was afraid to see you cry

Maybe you didn’t need to cry

Maybe I can tell such a brilliant lie…

I loved to hurt you but you never felt a blow

I could kiss you and still you’d never know…

Baby, where did I go?—More Sword

Still In Love

Lovers leave their traces like jets across the sky

They find in others’  faces lines they recognise

My keepsakes have their places –

At the back of a drawer or slipped between pages and stuck on a shelf

But I’m still in love with nothing but myself

Yeah, sometimes I remember the way they signed their names

And always in December I feel some kind of shame

The heart it stays so tender –

I reminisce like a hangman wishing his prisoners well

But I’m still in love with nothing but myself

I know their mothers’ ages

I know all the stories so well

And I know I’ll see their faces in hell

So wipe away their traces, blow the dust off from the shelf

‘Cos I’m still in love

With nothing but myself—More Sword

No, Surrender

Big Macs for the fat, lo-cal wraps for the call centre battery hens,

Japanese snacks for the choice-spoilt citizens, caviar kickbacks for the citadel denizens.

Airport shoeshines servicing the suits among the little silver stereos and hand-rolled cheroots,

First class passengers file on last after the scum are packed in with their tax-free loot.

Checkout calamity, you’re cheated out of loyalty points, ten more years at this joint you’d be home & dry,

Beggars beat round the cash machines but you just slip between them with the usual lie.

Terrible tales of kidnapped kids keep you focused on the family and filling up the fridge,

Neighbourhood watchers shop dole dodgers, stick their semis on the market & start racking up the bids.

Should you stand and fight, should you die for what you think is right

So your useless contribution will be remembered?

If you’re asking me I say no, surrender.

Constant growth the cancerous cure, a swarming race of profiteers…—More Sword

Medical Advice

You can be in love with life without ever noticing the creeping carcinogen of general guilt amassing within. Forgive yourself. It was only drink. You didn’t fuck up the planet. You don’t even own a hairdryer.

When you see happy rich people just remember: that’s what you look like to poor people. But that’s no reason not to relish despising them. Or yourself, for that matter.

My uncle used to go off to a health farm to drink purer gin. He returned rosy-cheeked and better connected. I suppose it was rehab with a little more leeway.

It is a myth that sparkling drinks get you drunk quicker. It is drinking quickly that gets you fucked sooner. Try slamming wine. You become inoperable after a remarkably short time. Probably best reserved for right before they hang you.

When entirely sated it is best to sample one more sip just to be absolutely sure.

Only drink malt…—More Untruths

To Shit in a Shopping Trolley

It was announced earlier today that the world, hitherto assumed to be royally knackered, is in fact going to shit in a shopping trolley. And now over to Steve for the sport.—More Rants/Slates

Birdsong BBC 1 Sundays in January

Birdshit

A more ponderous, pretentious and ultimately vapid drama is hard to imagine unless one dared contemplate an adaptation of Barbara Cartland’s “Love Under Fire” directed by Tony Scott and starring, say, that little pillock from Muse.

Nothing in this lavishly ill-conceived dross was even remotely credible. The enigmatically mumbled dialogue was vacuous, the performances monstrously vain, the direction risibly portentous and criminally derivative. Even the score was crass, repetitive and smug.

Essentially a non-stop sequence of face-achingly drawn out close-ups of a freckly shampoo model with girly lips, the whole production resembled an absurd three hour advert for some dreadful bottled stench called, perhaps, Trenchfoot (by Givenchy). In its desperation to milk cheap reactions from the TV audience, Birdsong played every low trick in the manual – gore, guts and cardboard heroics cut with bucolic idylls shot through diaphanous silks and wafting foliage – resulting in nothing less than hardcore emotional pornography.…—More Rants/Slates

Secret Album 1

A lopsided frantic drumbeat followed by a hurried fill brings in a strange flapping scalene bass melody. It comes seemingly from a brooding sky. A guitar cuts in, arpeggiating on two strings in a dumb angular primitive way. The voice starts, a crooner in some dripping concrete basement intoning news of a cataclysm. Things are crashing, or at least racing into chaos. It is already frightening. Family pets are distressed, you don’t really like this dim, echoing cathedral of disquiet.

But you venture further in and though things warp, slow down – the atmosphere of doom is relentless. The metal guitar alternates between melody, crunch and a sort of ratcheting, like something with steel teeth being cranked. There are hints of narrative – empty cars, everything abandoned: where will it end? The singer modulates up an octave. He seems desperately scared. Is this entertainment?

The drums are in the wrong room, it’s…—More Rants/Slates

Secret Album 2

Is this a carnival or a retirement home for mad veterans? Why are we in this theatre and why are the rich folk laughing. Is something funny?

You slide into a choir of Jack-the-Lads, get jostled by their bonhomie before being set adrift on a glass sea. You float until thumped by a comedy boxing glove. Images crowd around you, people sail past on the green banks of a slow brown river, grinning like masks. It is heaven perhaps, but you doubt it. You are spiked on the stab of a chiming guitar – dit – dit – dit…Everyone is smiling sarcastically, the bass guitar huffs like a grumpy rag-and-bone man. There is a strong echo of vaudeville but it is overlaid with a savage modernism. Fuzz-tones, cockney warbling, somnambulant drumming and Victoriana. You get thrown from room to room – these people are schizophrenic, their songs face one another like…—More Rants/Slates

Frankfurt to Amsterdam

Back to the Kingdom of Fright

The Galaxy is pointed north to Amsterdam, from where sail shall be set home. The palpable kick-back of Holland comes upon me like a psalm. Those quietly fuming German men in their powerful cars, spinning past us like mad wolves are a thing of memory. It is suggested that we stop into Utrecht, and we do, and it’s worth it. I buy a trinket, and have a wonderful coffee, accompanied by a quality biscuit. A still canal laces it’s elegant way through my street. A stoner approaches me for emergency advice on the nearest available Coffee Shop. I shrug and dismiss him rudely but watch as the next Dutch guy attends to him, removes his headphones and gives a detailed description of the available outlets. This is heaven compared to home.

But maybe I judge too harshly. After all, is Britain not the country which produced…—More Tales

Bielefeld to Frankfort

Rain Falling Into the Future

I sleep in and am awoken by gentle knocking. I have a mild hangover – the first in a month. I throw my electronic nonsense into my case and wheel myself to the Galaxy without brushing my teeth. Tardiness doesn’t do on tour; it shows a lack of respect. I make an apology and the next journey begins.

I love touring, with all my fibre. It is a comforting routine in a distractingly different city every day. It is travelling with purpose and I wish it were still most of my life.

The route takes us through wooded rises and great open plains studded with industry. The Germans make things. They do it quietly and they do it well. They believe that industry is the bedrock of society and leisure its just reward. The carnage of Thatcherism never happened here and perhaps never could. It strains one’s soul…—More Tales

Day Off Hamburg

More sausage with that, Sir?

As soon as I hit Hamburg I feel a little more comfortable, I don’t know why. In Berlin I had spent a whole day traipsing with headphones bolted to my head. The only music that suited the city was the astringent tension of some Beethoven string quartets. It seemed to draw out the latent angst. Reggae was ridiculous; the lowering cloud cover and the flat shadowless spread of Berlin demanded something overcast. Those bleak modernist Lou Reed and David Bowie records were recorded there for a reason. There’s still a wall around the town somehow and it’s oppressive. The lack of a nearby coast perhaps, its proximity to the endless expanses of the east.

The people at the Hamburg show are very sweet and I enjoy myself – not always a great sign. The venue is housed deep inside a “flak tower”, an above ground six-storey anti-aircraft…—More Tales

Day off Berlin

Garden of Earthly Delights

I rise to milky sunshine spilling around my silver Venetian blinds. The hotel is called Zoo after the nearby attraction so I go directly there and buy a ticket at the gates. Wild animals caged and corralled right in the city’s heart. First up are a small group of Indian elephants, forlornly trying to get back inside their locked sleeping enclosure. Their trunks are fascinating and surprisingly dexterous. It’s a quiet day here, just a smattering of humans, mostly pushing prams and wheelchairs. I skirt around the giraffes paying them barely a glance and am drawn towards a lonely young panda who is endlessly shuttling between its shuttered hovel and some frustratingly fenced-off eucalyptus. It seems deranged but what do I know? Other visitors are captivated by its cuteness. If it was mine I’d have it put down.

The whole place is a morass of desperation. Grubby hooded…—More Tales

Erlangen to Berlin

North to Big Bertha

It is more or less straight north for four hours to reach Berlin. There are conifer-covered rises and wide ranges of great wind turbines along the route. I consider my usual conjecture – that if all the world’s energy demands were to be met by windmills there would be less wind. When you dam a river and form a lake to drive turbines there is no less water in the river system over time but there is less energy in the flow. Can somebody tell me – could we swallow all the wind?

The capital is gained before sunset and I have forty minutes to march about foolishly before being re-inserted into the Galaxy. I can’t find a single café; it’s all yuppie eateries and high-end wine stores. I am forced to resort to a Starfucks, filled with its usual mass of beige and brown swaddled idiots pointing…—More Tales

Vienna to Erlangen

Escape from the Hidebound Empire

I wake early and decide to take the opportunity to explore. I make a beeline for Rachel Whiteread’s Holocaust memorial in Judenplatz. Her Embankment installation at Tate Modern has lodged in my memory. The memorial is stark, quiet and eloquent. As I circle it’s concrete hulk the twin doors come upon me with a jolt: there are no handles. The library within is inaccessible because it has been burnt or buried or liquidated. I touch the pages of one of the silent books. A policewoman stands guard, presumably to protect the sculpture from desecration. She has missed the dirty purple teddy slumped in the doorway, with an “I Love You” cushion in its lap, shaped like a heart. Good grief. Somebody has inserted flowers in the empty holes where the doorknobs should be. It is the flagrant juxtaposition of the emptily sentimental with the sedately profound.

After…—More Tales

Munich to Vienna

Into the East

The cruiser skirts along the foothills of the Alps to our right, two-storey barns and bulbed church spires nestling in the hollows. Across the border: pop radio. Wall to wall FM shit from Bryan Adams to Madonna. Amy’s Back to Black saves the day, scything through the crud with an incomparable bitterness and wonder. The rain is all around the vehicle like a tempest. In my hideously over-decorated hotel room last night I took a lightning tour of the TV channels. As I drifted through ch. 28 I just caught Dizzee Rascal saying, “…and the winner is Lady Gaga!”. Whither the rascal now? I see a smiling industry reptile in a white suit. Review the situation, take part, take over? I guess you did, Dylan. Bon voyage!

I take a fast stroll around the nearest bit of Vienna to the hotel. I’ve never been here before. I see rich…—More Tales

Amsterdam to Eindhoven

On down the toy motorway

Chocolate box Amsterdam terraces lean over their canals like kindly big brothers. Saturday mornings are easy here; none of that London mania or Glasgow hungover fermenting madness, just serene bicycling adults sailing by like swans, watchful and aloof. You can spot the stag-weekenders crowding into tiny corner cafes looking miserable and wondering why they came abroad with this shower of dicks. You know and they know that copious amounts of beer will be their only salvation. It is before midday and some are already nervously eyeing their watches. There is good time for a stroll and a few coffees. A girl is bumped from her perch on the back of her boyfriend’s bike by a passing van. She dusts herself off and remounts without complaint. How far can you push these folk before they become, well, intolerant?

Everything in Holland looks like a toy. It’s as if…—More Tales

Tyneside to Amsterdam

Sail Away

I straddle the fat white tire-tracks of our wake as we put to sea. Desultory fireworks fizzle in the low winter sky like a damp valediction and Tyneside’s orange lights diminish as the ship is swallowed by the black sea. Over to my left a thin man peers back to land with a thin silver tin of beer, reeking of reflection or regret. A waft of fetid cooking fat puffs out from the ship’s kitchen. As the last two lighthouses pass like sentry-posts a couple ask me to take their photograph, with the dim sight of Blighty as their backdrop. There is a large height difference between them, making composition difficult. I am unhappy with the result but a message in German says the memory card is full. The tall young man seems satisfied with my effort. Below me, on deck 7, a clutch of cider-buzzing lads pose for…—More Tales

Secret Album 6

You can hear them breathing before the delicacy lifts onto the air. Twinned and entwined, the two guitars dance around one another as human voices drone and intone biblical motifs, cuss words and longing – longing is the word. The opening number dies like bathwater draining down and segues into swamp banjo blues. This is all very live. We are stretched somewhere between The Stones and 1768. Thick swathes of forest and peeling wooden church-houses, a keening call from the past, a brilliant deception: dressed in civil war clothes, singing an acidic parody of sepia sentiment, weird modern wolves breathe vodka fury under the sacrificial lambswool.

The ballads break hearts and are filled with devastated mystery. They operate on the mind like photographs from an unreachable dream. Scenes from the small town rock and roll circuit speak of unfathomable sadness. Ruination and emptiness call from the souls of regular folks; immigrants,…—More Rants/Slates

Epigrams of April

Epigrams of April

A blister is a balloon to a bee, a place to frolic and reflect.

All adverts are designed to mind-fuck children.

The universe is bigger than Jesus but you’re better than that.

Belt up, we’re going for a ride. Second thoughts, get out – we don’t need you.

No matter how high they build the walls, how strong the fences, I’ll stay where I am reading the paper.

Mercy is a virtue found only in the bastards whose power makes it a possibility.

A mouse is to a cat what whiskey is to a folk singer.

If you do that three more times I’m going to kill you.

I’d be a world leader if they let me. I’d live on a plane and attempt to have barbecues banned. I’d fire a rocket at Bono. I’d dig a trench around Luton.

I can forgive anything but wanton acts of Christianity.

When all the lights go green I’m gonna be…—More Untruths

Epigrams of March

A cartwheel is the closest you ever get to snowfall.

Feelings are the things you talk about when you have nothing left to say.

A diamond in the rough is vastly inferior to a single shoe sitting in the snow.

If human beings could mind-read they’d never let an animal into their house.

It is in the imagining of such atrocities that we might avoid them.

Don’t hate Phil Collins because his voice sounds like the air being let out of a whale carcass. Hate him because he’s a tax-exile, Tory cunt.

It is time to go to somewhere else where it will be time to go.

By all means seek perfection but don’t ask me to admire it.

Next summer is always better than this one.

I’d rather hear the din of a tap-dancer in an empty skip than a poorly played saxophone.

They say the drums must never stop. True. But should the bagpipes ever start? I like…—More Untruths

Secret Album 5

Chime, chime, chime. A swirl of harmonies, maximum compression – I am stoned in this slow whirlpool of crunching gravel. Electric guitar cream. Wah, Aah, Ba-pa-pah…

Non-stop pop. Chugging: dum dum dum – drang drang drang. Lovers’ songs, leavers’ longing, pain and needing – she’s back again, your heart is bleeding.

Strumming and picking, the ocean’s lapping and the stars’ blinking. Electric guitars built in a bank of colour. Words sewn into streaming tunes flutter like ribbons. This truck is tuned and humming, growling, gunning.

Riffs write themselves on the air like titanium ticker-tape, chords plunge and swoop. The rhythm section lays a lazy line under all this sunshine. I stagger from song to song sticky with nectar. I am happy.

Can I hear a doubt in these sweet intimations of love, or feel a discouraging breeze? In all this pretty chiming can I hear a sour bell call from the darkness?

Is your love…—More Rants/Slates

Secret Album 4

A single snare beat in its spring reverb halo hits and the whole world comes tumbling in. A waterfall of wires, a mass of roots seeking something in the soil. He is callous, weary and unforgiving, a bitter agent sent here to do somebody’s dirty work. He is here to give the folk some news: You’re nothing, so rot in hell.

He sings across the sky like a heretic in a minaret. The band can barely contain the anarchy, they talk over one another like a table of drunks. They fight like cats to break through the jungle of sirens in the sound. The voice weaves between them like a rope of disgust in a barrel of snakes. Whistles blow, absurd postcards are thrown in your face. You are hustled down hallways and dragged into doors to be presented with the grotesque like specimens in a gallery of the damned. Laughter…—More Rants/Slates

2010 Biography

2010 saw Justin Currie, erstwhile singer and songwriter from collapsed Scottish pop-rock group, Del Amitri release his second solo album, The Great War. This relatively airy and accessible record followed 2008’s What Is Love For, an album noted for its grindingly indulgent conflation of unreconstructed self-pity and wearying disgust.

These two competing strands within Currie’s output have led many to compare him to Haribo’s Super Sour Monsters – garishly packaged sugar coated jelly that remains, nonetheless, bitter and very hard to swallow. However, he maintains a (dwindling) devoted following despite having written nary a hit since 1998, partly due to his music’s enduring appeal to losers, misfits and obsessively bitter divorcées.

Currie lives in Scotland with his cat, Abdul, remains unmarried and quite possibly infertile.

—More Untruths

A Potted Autobiography

I love Ingrid Bergman. I like Feargal Sharkey.

I think Paula Rego sings from a soul as yet undiscovered.

I have not read The Bible.

I know Salvador Dali is shit.

I have piles.

The more somebody is hated the more I hate their enemies.

I am happy to cry at Field of Dreams, The Dead, Aubade, Ride With The Devil and Lassie Come Home but I resent the manipulation of Cormac McCarthy –

fascism lies within the attempt to control human emotions.

I shrink from confrontation.

Belief in God is a sure sign of a profound lack of imagination.

Don Paterson rocks.

Tom Waits is a charlatan. Nick Cave’s relevance is still an open debate.

I have a place on my back, when somebody kisses it: I breathe fire.

The Fall constantly call me through the fog.

I am yet to read Ulysses.

It is impossible to second guess Bob Dylan.

I am pretty sure, although I hate it, if I re-read Darkmans I will…—More Untruths

Secret Album 3

It is sunny – very sunny. An acoustic guitar gallops like an eager horse. You hear everything clearly – the air is white, the ground is cream. The world is clean and it sparkles in a beautiful cool morning. Perhaps you have been awake all night. Everything is good.

You quickly slow down. The rhythm section clocks the singer like a mechanical doll. The voice is strung on the beat like a diaphanous summer dress. The air of melancholy is so sweet as to make you stoned. So much pleasure in such easy pain.

Folk-picking circles around a pretty motif. A new voice undermines its whimsicality with hints of unhappiness. You are pushed into a show-tune. There could be a chorus line, a can-can and glitter covered top-hats. These are up people for an up time. The overarching flavour is smooth. You begin to feel a little nauseous.

The clinical positivity continues but…—More Rants/Slates

Further Epigrams

Just because they say it’s going to be the end of the world soon is no need to cancel your subscriptions to the very organs that tell you this.

A television licence is necessary if you wish to continue to be offended.

Someday we’ll learn to abandon bigotry and racism and replace them with the understanding that everybody is an asshole and the world would be better off without them.

If you wish to continue to feel pointlessly guilty you may as well do something really bad.

The people who actually read the news have no idea what they are saying. The people who write it have no idea what they are doing.

Football fans give offence with impunity but take umbrage like spoilt little girls. They are boy-princes in their protective palaces of bullshit machismo. Laura Marling could take them all in a fight.

Tom Waits is a charlatan but a very good mover.

History repeats…—More Untruths

January Epigrams

Late at night is never early in the morning. Tomorrow only occurs when you decide today is done.

The things that genuinely frighten you are the things you are completely unaware of.

Don’t think you’re clever if you half understand something complicated but if you can understand how complicated it is then you’re not as simple as you thought.

Dreams mean zip. Dreams are random letters thrown together to make meaningless words in a great novel of gobbledegook. When you come across some old friend wrapped in cling-film in a cinema it’s just, “jcbjhb hfgbh sab kjdah.”

Punk rock was invented by the government to prevent anything real from changing.

You can create the actual conditions of Coldplay writing “Yellow” by sticking a Dyson up a hand-dryer.

Homonyms are also pronounced differently.

You can terrify yourself if you stare into a mirror long enough.

Jimi Hendrix was a better singer than Rod Stewart. He may not, however, have…—More Untruths

Seattle and Portland 15th May 2008

I am moving along the highway between Seattle and Portland through the lush pastures of the Pacific northwest. Farmsteads nest cosily amongst the cows and tall pines and blossoming roadside shrubbery. No matter where you are on this continent you always know it’s North America. You’ve seen every region – mountainous, arable, rocky and desolate in countless Westerns, road movies and documentaries. Not an inch uncovered by celluloid, only the interior life lived in these locations remains mysterious to those of us from abroad and that’s as hard a nut to crack as any. Don’t be fooled, the North Americans are a complex people and those representations of their national character, be it Kennedy, Monroe or Jimmy Stewart are less archetype than empty caricature. Everyone here, it sometimes seems, is as much Melville’s Ishmael as Coppola’s Captain Willard, Hulk as Annie Hall or Houdini as Huckleberry Finn. With, God help…—More Tales

New York April 27th 2008

Manhattan

From the interstate New Jersey mostly appears to be an industrial scale service area for New York City – warehousing, processing plants, railroad yards and depots. We emerge from the Holland tunnel into the 21st century Disney-fied and strangely sedate Manhattan. No clamour anymore, no insane rush of adrenalin, no filth except the filthy rich. Successive mayors have expunged pretty much everything that made New York unique and now it’s safer and calmer and a great place for the wealthy to shop and school their kids. I miss the old version, the eighties bankrupt, crazy capital-of-the-known world version. I guess you’d find that buzz now in Rio or Shanghai. In the U.S. everything gets suburbanised eventually, even the vertical. But I’m an outsider scratching a square inch on the surface of a city containing four times the population of Switzerland and New York is still out there, in there, but…—More Tales

Atlantic City April 27th 2008

Atlantic City

People ask me what I’ve been doing the last ten years since I toured here. It’s a difficult question to answer without sounding like an alcoholic recluse. I’ve been watching television: Ten series of Big Brother, fifty DVD box-sets, God knows how many Matches of the Day. I watch every football show broadcast. I have watched every hour of Wimbledon, all day and every day since 1998. I watch obscure film noirs and 1940s Westerns. World Cups, European Championships, Champions Leagues, World Series, Olympic Games, Pop Idol, Later With Jools, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Question Time, Extras, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Entourage. I have watched documentaries about murder cases, wars and famines. Quiz shows, panel games, sit-coms and period dramas. Property shows, How-To-Dress-Like-A-Cunt shows and the news, the news; flitting between continents, sport , weather and global desolation. And I have been nursing week-long hangovers. Grinding, edgy, deranged…—More Tales

Fairfax, Virginia 25th April 2008

To Fairfax, Virginia

I’m sad to see the back of San Francisco because I know we’re headed for the sticks. I bid farewell to civilization as the gimmick-laden Virgin America Airbus lifts out of the mist. Five hours later we touch down in DC and head for the rental car lot. En route I notice that the streets are aircraft themed. There is Auto-Pilot Drive, Landing Gear Avenue and Cockpit Place. No Heroes of 9/11 Plaza, as yet. Our hotel is situated in not so much a satellite town as a soulless congregation of intersections and strip-malls. We take some ghastly food, trapped in toxic polystyrene, from a chain restaurant back to our rooms. It is warm down here and the night seems thicker, the dense woods studded between the cement black against the sky.

I watch an old Michael Redgrave movie and eat my shrimp salad with a plastic spoon spirited…—More Tales

San Francisco 23rd April 2008

Day Off San Francisco

After an appearance at KFOG, the big “triple A” station here run by a loyal supporter, Dave Benson, I take a walk downtown to buy a new suitcase. There is a bewildering array in Macy’s and I do my neurotic mother act, pulling twenty different models from their tidy displays and roughing them up for signs of weakness. I eventually plump for something stupidly expensive that seems hardier than the malfunctioning cheap shit I brought with me. I notice it is made in Thailand. I step back into the daylight with my empty black tank to find myself surrounded by up-market designer outlets and multifarious street people,  the juxtaposition a living cliche of Reaganite social inequality. I hike up the ten blocks to the hotel checking out the different signs the homeless guys hold. One rhymes, “I sleep on the street, I eat from the trash, I…—More Tales

San Francisco 22nd April 2008

To San Francisco

We are quickly onto the freeway and into the small groupings of hills that break up the city, rashes of bright green shoots spreading amongst the brown scrub. In front of us is a filthy truck with the word suicide written above its rear driver-side wheel and an arrow pointing to where passing him might achieve this end. The Six Flags amusement park drifts by, a jumble of roller-coasters wrestling in a hollow. The desert weeds are blooming along the slopes and verges in wonderful yellows and florescent greens. Electricity pylons run along the ridges above us with their hands on their hips. The road curves smoothly round sandy outcrops and shrub lined arroyos. There is a faint echo of Scotland in the topography but it’s all so much wider. In America one can see the sense of CinemaScope; a peek through God’s letterbox.

Akiva introduces us to the…—More Tales

Los Angeles 21st April 2008

To Los Angeles

I am seated in a row with a young mother and baby on the aisle and a green Marine returning from leave beside me. They get talking and I earwig while pretending to read. He tells her Marines are the best of the best and never wear uniform when they travel on civilian transport. He shows her a picture of his sweetheart.  “She’s been kind of shy with me,” he tells her,  “But she’s opened up recently.”  I wonder if he understands the subtext or the inference she might make of this. He is both charmingly naive and frighteningly simple. She asks him if he’s been to, “You know, Iraq?”  He has not yet seen active duty.  “But I’m going to Afghanistan in July.”

“Will you be nervous?” she asks. “No,” he says, ” I’m excited.”

Her baby starts to cry and we hit a little turbulence and the teenage…—More Tales

Milwaukee 20th April 2008

To Milwaukee

We pull over at The Ironworks Restaurant truck-stop off of I-94 and sit around the counter on vinyl swivel-seats. Fake veneer abounds and there is the small miracle of ashtrays at every place setting beside the mahogany brown upturned coffee mugs waiting to be filled and refilled. You can still see the old phone points built into the counter where truckers would phone home before the age of the cell-phone. I used to use these all the time – it was such a luxury talking to someone in the Scottish morning from your midnight booth as you waited for your eggs over-easy, usually half-cut on weak American beer.

Our waitress, well past retirement age and quick as a whippet, gets our mugs upended and takes our orders. Later she tells us how her husband, who worked for the Denny’s chain of greasy-spoons, used to get “ticked off” with air travel.…—More Tales

Minneapolis 19th April 2008

“Roads girdle the globe”

As the freeway reaches the Minnesota border, steel plate cloud draws over the lowering sun. Joni Mitchell’s lush re-arrangement of “Refuge of the Roads” stirs around the van. No leaves on the trees here, the big freeze having only recently crept away but it’s balmy tonight and grateful Minnesotans congregate around patio-heaters outside bars and restaurants. Such is the ferocity of their winters, every building has multiple sequences of doors and the small square windows of our hotel are hermetically sealed. We browse a surplus store opposite the gig; a hundred kinds of glove and Navy coats so thick they seem to stand erect unaided. Men are empty overcoats, Groucho said.

I was here, at the Fine Line Music Cafe in 1990 and it retains a sort of quaint 1980s smugness. A venue for the discerning professional. Exposed brick and tables and chairs and an ironic catch-phrase on…—More Tales

Chicago 17th April 2008

To Chicago

We pass rolling fields of yellowed stubble, kites suspended overhead eyeing the rat-runs. Road-kill raccoons litter the shoulder; I speculate that it’s mating season, that they’re throwing themselves across the freeway to reach potential mates whose ripe scents are wafting on the wind. You could get three coats and a good stew from the carnage.

Enormous road-side billboards invite us to Adult Superstores (1000 yards off Exit 56) and budget motels and family restaurants. There is not much view for them to obscure. A pair of hipster dudes zip by in a vintage Buick, wearing vintage shades and vintage T-shirts and vintage facial hair. Then a pick-up passes towing a trailer loaded with blasting material. That’s followed by a truck carrying medical waste. There’s a pile-up I’d like to see.

The lady in the truck-stop admires my shirt. I seem to be appealing to the older woman these days. Once they’d…—More Tales

Ann Arbour 15th April 2008

Morning flight from the lump strewn landscape of Tennessee up to flat Michigan, the sausage factory’s walls adorned with huge ads for visitor tours of the JD distillery. They encourage responsible drinking, apparently. What that means I will never unravel. Akin to considerate joy-riding. We try to find a soul station around Detroit in our fuck-the-climate vehicle with no luck. I hear something about a hot-dog eating contest and take in some morsels of PBS news. A little Obama chat breaks out among us.

Ann Arbour is Michigan’s Madeleine Stowe to Detroit’s Mae West. All a little too tidy and brittle. We browse a second-hand book shop filled with pristine cellophane-wrapped volumes. Peter turns us on to Wuthering Heights and I stifle the urge to mention Kate Bush with her dope and her washing machine. I pick up a tastefully presented copy of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, more through duty…—More Tales

Nashville 14th April 2008

Down and outs shuffling around country town at dawn, no place to be poor but where is? A black woman whose hair is dyed green shouts across the canyon of the street for change. I greet her with a limp excuse and a counterfeit shrug. Dead bird on the road and that one on the thin tree outside my hotel room isn’t sleeping, it’s stuffed. Everybody calls us gentlemen, good thing we’re soft and forgiving. Are you playing music? No, I’m carrying these two guitars for a man who does floors. Ranch dressing, so reminiscent of the high plains – all those steers squirting out blue cheese and herbs. The public library stands solidly amongst a forest of hollow car-parks. The accents are heavy and sweet like warm treacle. You find yourself getting drowsy in their slick. Many are shuttered behind dark glass in black trucks. If they are shadows…—More Tales

Classified

I eat too much. I get on top of people. I take and take. I feed the animals. I frown at priests. I walk all over the grass, away from the paths. I despise. I resent. I field questions and force doors. I rape as I write. I crucify. I crucify kids. I prefer The Rolling Stones. I wallow and I waste years. I dream bad scenes and perform ungodly acts. I cry, cry like a horn. I upset tables and tear up wires. I drone. I drone on. I drink to excess. I bore the walls rigid. I fly jets into pets. I take up golf. I play with fire and fire-hoses.

I bury everything in earth, hate in spades, I cruise grim streets, I fake concern, I re-make the world with a hammer. I am polite. I worry. I make mistakes and I pay and I fade away. I…—More Untruths

Top Ten Glasgow Pubs

Justin Currie’s top 10 Glasgow pubs

1. The Persian’s Forehead

An enormous hanger-like place tucked down a grim Dickensian back lane in the most sullen and sallow quarter of the east end, The Persian’s Forehead features low-lifes of every persuasion; stabbers, dealers, pimps and perverts – dipsomaniacs all – begging for another taste of the landlord’s special: Black Thunder, a mixture of Guinness and red wine. I wouldn’t recommend going here without a weapon of some sort – perhaps a saw or a table leg.

2. Dorothy’s

Dorothy’s lies in a low-ceilinged basement on Sauchiehall Street (pronounced Sickle Street) at the bottom of a flight of steps so steep and uneven that many customers and staff-members either permanently limp or use crutches. Dot is famed for her repartee, her elliptical Polish riddles a particular delight.

I once played here on Valentine’s day and was assaulted in the toilets by a one-eyed ballerina called Mary. She…—More Untruths

A Beginners’ Guide to Songwriting

As there are so many frequently asked questions I receive through this site I thought it might be useful to set out a few standard answers in the blog section to save everybody time. I shall deal firstly with the issue of songwriting, a subject about which I know virtually nothing but am constantly quizzed upon by those presumably even more talentless than I. Of course, remarkable ignorance of a topic has  never prevented me from expounding upon it at length before and I see no reason why it should stop me now.

1. Mood, Environment and Ambience

The first step in the manufacture of a successful song is the manipulation of the composer’s mood. Critically, he (or she but for the sake of convenience I shall stick to the masculine singular) must be hungry. Very hungry. Try missing breakfast. Then lunch and dinner (and if applicable) supper. Keep this up for…—More Untruths

Recipe

Binned Onions  (Serves 1)

Ingredients;

Three large Spanish onions

Six medium sized French onions

Eight medium shallots

A bunch of spring onions

First find the bluntest knife you can find. You can recognize this by the ghastly bleating sound it makes when you slap it off the edge of a wooden table or, if you wish, the kerb.

Take the three large Spanish onions and slice about half a centimetre thick (about the width of a fake pound coin). Throw them in the bin. Open a cold can of beer. Drink.

Then peel and roughly chop the six medium French onions and carefully tip them into the bin. Open a can of cold beer. Drink.

Now chop the shallots as finely as you can manage with your blunt knife. Probably best just to mash them to a lumpy paste with the flat of the blade and then add them to the other onions in the bin taking care not…—More Untruths

Christmas Diatribe 2005

There is piss and vomit upon the ground, deep and crisp and even, in some places dusted with polystyrene snow. There are restive plugs of shoppers, close to riot crammed into retail entrances like human stuffing. The pubs are full of an unusual sort of idiot, the one who has spent everything he has on those that he loathes and is now taking revenge on his own body with a cocktail of beverages so ill suited that just two in a small bowl would kill a dog.

There are hugs for hated underlings and kisses for the normally ignored from a tosser in the top job who’s vibrating already in expectation of the vile powders his sneering assistant has gone to fetch. Soon he shall be selecting his coterie of cokers for the night and sensing a new omnipotence; the kids’ schools paid up for another year, the villa held for…—More Rants/Slates