What's this?

 This is a very old blog that I found still existed. I thought I'd repost it on my socials as I gave up my last website as the platform is owned by an Israeli company who don't opposed the genocide of the Palestinians. I also couldn't afford it anyway. It was interesting reading the old posts on here as I am still feeling the after effects of that time in my life. It was pretty relentless I'd have to say. I'm so glad things have finally calmed down enough for me process it all. I'll probably start a new page or continue to update this one. 

T2...Judgment day

T2.  Trainspotting 2                                                          A badly edited self absorbed review.

Gash bits... this is not the Edinburgh I know.  In the Edinburgh I know you are by far more likely to get assaulted or back stabbed by an art student than you are by a junkie or a hun, or is that just my experience.   I'm guessing that at this late stage in the game spoilers don't matter but don't worry as the next sentence won't make any sense unless you have already seen it.   As much as I laughed at the deid catholic scene I also winced.  What with the recent Edinburgh Evening news report covering violence at the International Bar as if it were your standard evening bit of football violence you get round there.  I'd have to say that that's where I go to hide normally and really everyone in there just let you have your drink in peace so you can just read the papers.  I thought it highlighted the mood towards surviving non gentrified bars in the Tollcross area which really doesn't have much to do with Danny Boyles take on things since sickboy wants to turn his crappy dive into a brothel and he struggles to have many customers but it added to my irratation. I wanted the film to reflect something tangible about my own experiences in Edinburgh but it just failed to do that.  MAybe its just because I never knew Edinburgh when I saw the first Trainspotting so it didn't bother me that it was misrepresented.  Maybe I just live in a warped reality.  Maybe its because I've never touched heroin.  Who knows!Another annoyance was the part where Renton bangs on about how naff everyone is for using social media.  Well that only just goes to show that these Hollywood types have totally lost the thread.  Social media is what people do and here it slated by Hollywood folk who probably don't use it because they are to busy being consumed by their exciting lives that easily manage to avoid the mundane. 
Plus side, I liked it when the white tranny got flung across Daltons.  It reminded me of when thel ads did that to my Peugeot 205.  The roof came off like a baked bean can and as I hadn't taken the battery out Bleach started blaring out of the stereo.  I did notice that the boys in the office  were actually trying to upset me but it didn't work because I ended up with some of the most storming pictures and words for my book. 
Also, cheers Danny for making out a prostitute lives above Nardinis in Brunstsfeild.  They offered Callum a job for 4 quid an hour!! Outrageous!! Hopefully nobody will want an ice cream there since you changed it into the Harvest Loon.
One other thing, did Creative Scotland know what you were going to do with the money they gave you? Is that why there's not any cash for the film house that could have got built at fountainbridge?  Don't worry non-Hollywood types that might be reading this, these are rhetorical questions.
The film itself isn't bad but I wanted it to be a mash up of Robert Carlyle's Legend of Barney Thompson and Boyles Slumdog Millionaire and it wasn't even close to either of them in humour, realism or intensity. 

Another T2 at Fountainbridge with Sarah Connor

Spud say's first comes an opportunity then a betrayal. I think ,in my case, the betrayal comes first. 

Accrington isn't boring!

Having been told there was nothing interesting in Accrington the search was actually easy. I I took a picture of this badge declaring the peace waging capacity of nuclear submarines in what appeared to be a small curiousity shop. A fellow from the local community action group, which runs Accrington museum, (baisically a stall in the local market next to the town hall) was partly disgruntled by my picture taking. He pointed out an aged microscopic piece of paper scrawled on in blue biro. "Please ask permission to photograph my collection." I apologised and he insisted that it was fine but that he had an interesting story to tell about his dad and his friend Blackie who were stationed at Faslane Naval base back in the 70's. Apparently both men had staggered back to the base very late and pissed after a night out in Helensburgh. Having unavoidably attracted the attention of senior officers both men were given cleaning duty the next morning. Blackie was given the job of cleaning the torpedo room and inadvertantly pressed the launch button with his elbow while dusting a periscope as he stumbled around nursing a dreadful hangover. A torpedo was sent up the loch knocking over a boat carrying several fisher men and blowing the local milk lady clean into the air as the missile blew up at Garelochhead. According to this tale, which was clearly riddled with cavernous holes in the plot, he even knew the lady in questions name, Mrs. McClafferty. Apparently this had occured only moments before manouvers which would have seen the sub turned round. The story goes that if it had been the other way round the torpedo would have hit the QE 2 which was moored in Greenock.
He also had a large collection of glass bottles and jars of which I was very jealous. Clearly mistaking this jealousy for something else he grasped at my arm as I tried to leave hauling me in for a kiss. He missed where a normal kiss would go and it landed on my eye. I'm not sure what the moral of this story is. Suggestions appreciated!

The really bad bits of 2016

(I've written this blog post to remind myself of some of the facts from last year.  A year where I thought I'd went mad...or madder than normal at least.  Its holey but it descibes the reality of a situation where I believe that if I'd been someone else I'd have recieved help or at the very least some honesty.Due to the amount of time this has taken me Ive just allowed myself to stop and publish so I can get on with what I'm good at...a bit of something fictional! *TYPO ALERT*)

It's been some year and this post is a wee bit late for new year but I felt it nessesary to make sure that anyone that follows my blog knows what kind of year it has been.  It began with the deaths of a Star Man and an angel and ended with the death of a Rebel Princess.  Evolution however can begin at an ending.  Perhaps a lesson from those that have passed as a lesson for the living.  Women...stand up for youselves! Sexism doesn't help anyone! Romatic notions of a knight in shining armour that holds doors open is not what is going to be happening in this new age if thats what we hoped for.  Gentlemen be banished and make way for Carry On the Whitehouse.  It's like a re take of the 80's...I wonder if Tennents will put naked ladies back on their cans?   Yes Trumps on his way but the adoration of bolshey woman who don't give a shit what a man thinks of them based on physicality was magnified by the unfortunate death of Carrie Fisher.   The idolisation of celebrity pales in significance to the deaths and displacement of millions of innocent people the world over.  Brexit led me to believe that the people of Britain actually do not care or if they do they are not motivated in the right manner to be able to do anything about it.  It was a case of the blind following the blind in the cases of the UK's 'brexit' from Europe on top of the election of known mysogenist, racist and idiot Donald Trump an echo of abandon ship, abandon ship echos around our minds!  We are on the edge of a precipice, dwindleing, wondering how it will pan out.  As ever many will run away but more interestingly who will stand and fight?  Who will be able to effect positive change, who will create more chaos?

 As ever I did my best to effect my own mission towards some sort of positive change in the world while all this was going on.  Although facing a bleak future personally due to debt and housing problems I was lucky to recieve financial assistance from a business that donates to good causes and was able to visit the Greek Island of Samos as part of a project that was helping refugees there.  To me it was a deeply uplifting experience.  I was able to help families on their path if only for a brief moment in time.  Many of the children called me teacher although I didn't feel much like one but these people who didn't have very much could see it in me.   We made art and grew plants, normal things that happen everyday for most of us.  I made new friends who I watch with admiration now on social media as they travel around Europe and the middle east helping others where they can.  I gathered material for an exhibition to keep as many eyes as possible on the plight of the refugees. I made friends with people on Samos instantly.  It was a thing that I'd forgotten about after several years of experiences with fair weather friendships and relationships based on dog eat dog mentalities. After such a positive experience I was destroyed by the following month sequence of events in the city that has become my home.

I was already aware that my presence on the Fountainbridge site in Edinburgh was viewed upon skeptically.  I'd fallen into a project that was to make local authorities, businesses and universities shine like stars but there I was. Little socially alienated me working away, several paces in front of a plan I knew nothing about, doing what I do.  I was informed by one represntative that I was never meant to be there in the first place.  A funny thing to say for an enterprise that was supposed to be community based and organic in nature.  I'd moved my old showmans living wagon there to the community garden and it had been repeatedly broken into and robbed from.  All my efforts at building things were destroyed as the council moved us around the site.  If  you've never seen the film Gaslight then take this as an opportunity to watch it now to understand what it is that I was going through at this time.  Precious things of mine were moved around or destroyed altogether.  I informed the police on occasions that this had happened for them and everybody else that I knew to conclude that I was paranoid.  I had asked whether the area was safe before I moved there and had been informed by those living on the canal that it was.  Within weeks of my arrival the fires began.  A community space that had been built on the site generated interest from local young people and as a glass maker I hoped that it was just a matter of time before I would be able to engage them into making some art work on the site.  I'd contacted local schools but was ignored so continued to work away with these socially alienated young people.  This happened until the space they'd taken on as their lair was set alight and they all dissappeared.  Although there were witnesses to the event the police investigation was totally inadequate and as I continued to describe to the authorities similar events with discriptions of the offenders I was continually ignored and the young people were blamed.

On the night of the 14th of March 2016 I went out with a friend and as we headed home we stopped for a drink in a tollcross pub called Burlington Berties.  I'd been subjected to open bullying around the area already.  Total strangers shouting abuse at me in pubs, bad treatment by staff in the Cameo, the local cinema of which I am very fond, and horrifyingly enough derogatory comments from strangers in the street while they bounced me off their shoulders in broad daylight.  On this occasion, after puting on Beat It by Michael Jackson on the juke box, I was kicked in the back in front of everyone.  The girl ran away who had commited the action but her friends remained laughing at me.  My mate was like" Oi, that's totally out of order, that lassy just kicked my mate in the back!"  I looked round and everyone was laughing at me.  That is for the exception of some bar staff I recognised from another pub.  I asked them if any of them were ever going to stick up for me and they just stared sheepishly at their drinks.  We left that night and the next day I headed down to the community site and told another member of the group that I was going to be leaving leaving.
Being kicked and bullied by a group of people who I didnt know was unbearable and I had to go.  Two days later my precious family home was destroyed by fire.  As I listened to everyone say it was the kids I knew something was amiss.  Another lad who spent a lot of time on the site had found a photograph of my son perfectly preserved on the other side of the site under a stone.  He said, "it looks like somebody rescued this from the fire for you." I didn't see it that way, I saw it as a threat.  I know where it was in this vehicle that I'd brought my son up in and I know it wouldn't of survived.  Was it a threat on my son this time?  Who ever did it I only hope they knew I wasn't in there and if it had turned into a murder investigation it was totally clear that Police Scotland would have been totally inadequate at connecting any dots as it took them three days to attend the fire and none of the officers knew anything about any previous instances of vandalism on my personal property.

At this stage I thought I'd lost everything so there was very little that anybody could do to hurt me anymore.  I put a brave face on it and pretended I didn't care, I held back the tears while I stood in the wreckage and put on a facade on social media.  If the fire was started deliberately then I wasn't going to let anyone think they had managed to hurt me by doing it. Little did I know that I was soon to find out exactly who the perpetrator had most likely been.  Not only that but that people who had been acting as if they were helping me were in fact making the situation worse.

I had rented a shop on Earl Grey Street in Tollcross.  It was a big space and I wondered how I would fill it.  All the detritus from the fire looked like a bomb site so I figured I could use it to decribe just that. I was hurt by the fire but it gave me an opertunity to experience what it feels like to lose your home like the refugees in the crisis.  I rationalised my upset by comparing the situations.  I still had many things refugees did not so it made it easier for me to be pragmatic about the situation. I'd a lot of books in there and they had burned in a a marvelous way.  All the edges were singed but the firebrigade had doused them in water so it put them out in such a fashion that they all looked very beautiful to me.  The kind of look you give a peice of paper when you are wee and your making a treasure map.  I laid them out in patterns all over the floor.  Already this was being considered an art work by passersby although it was not going to stay this way as it became an improvised non-static instalation that changed all the time depending on what items could be found for free.  My old burnt cooker and other items were placed in the window with plants growing through them suggesting new growth from the ruins.  Always hope as for me there are no endings.  Within  days however I noticed the tell tale signs of somebody being in the shop.  The papers were thrown around.  Things were being shuffled about.  It was the same things that had been happening down at the Community project.  By this stage the gaslight effect had me thinking that these things weren't real or that I was doing them myself.  I had an old note book from back when I did a business course with the Princes Trust.  There was a photograph of my lorry in it and a load of bumf about how I was going to have a glass workshop in it eventually.  That had been found within all the pages I had lain out to dry and left in the middle of a table which had been cleared of all the other things which were thrown down the stairs in the basement.  I didn't call the police however untill I noticed somebody had written Jack on the wall in yellow wax and a light had been twisted round so that I would see it.  There was a delivery later that day for a Jack Anstiss for this address.  I sent it away as I sensed a trap so I thought I'll just call the cops and tell the owner that someone has been coming in here with a key.  As soon as the locks were changed all the weird things within the building stopped.  It didn't really end there and I'm not going to describe what happened during my exhibition as it can be followed on social media.
What I did learn after it from the Tories who decided to have a 'charity' shop in the building after I had used it was that the previous tennant had not been very nice.  They gave me her name and I looked her up on social media.  There was nothing condeming about her particularly and I know better than to ever EVER trust a tory but I spotted a familiar face.  This chracter, a student at ECA, had a girlfriend and that girlfriend is the one that had thought it would be funny to kick an already persecuted individual in the back.  I informed the police of this development and the waves of relief that flooded over me were significant.  This may be the only time I'll use a direct quote frome the police!

   JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE PARANOID DOESN'T MEAN NOBODYS OUT TO GET YOU

I apologise to those who I may have blamed that had nothing to do with the campaign of hatred against me and to those of you that took part.....it takes a lot more than that to stop me from making art!

Greetings!

Greetings passerby, as you may have noticed there has been some strangeness afoot at the Police box.  I'd have to admit it is pretty odd.  I'd like to invite you, if you have been in anyway entertained by it, to contribute some money to our crowd fund.

 We are heading to the Greek Island of Samos to paint a mural with Syrian refugees and do a bit of clowning with the kids there.  This has been partly sponsored by the council on the Island.  Just click the link and you can follow pyreism on here or twitter, tumblr and facebook.  I'm not brilliant at computers but will have my smart phone with me to record everything.

 As well as drawing and painting I take a lot of pictures so the more people that follow the more convinced we'll be that we are making a difference and helping these poor people.  We are also going to produce a film from the footage we take....that is pretty likely to be played here in the police box during the fringe.

Here's the crowd fund..........https://www.gofundme.com/reclaim-the-seas
Here's twitter....https://twitter.com/Lovecraft1123
Here's facebook
Here's tumblr

Having been spending most of our time off planet Earth these things have not been updated as often as they should.  I came to Edinburgh to study glass, you can read all about that in this blog.  After that I've tried a few things, none of which I ever seem to get paid for but it has ranged from journalism to community gardening.  You'll see in my twitter account people gave us an award for that! I got a selfie taken with Nicola Sturgeon!
In the picture below I did a spot of advertising for the Big Issue and one of my all time favorite artists Ralph Steadman! I don't know what he thought about it.  It's a play on some old black and white movies and the politics at the time. I thought it was pretty clever, I had to use Primark...or primani as I call it as the shoot location! I've made all my own clown gear by buying cheap out of primark then ramping the gear up a bit with patches and sequins. Im not a big fan of sweat shops so I feel this is a way of highlighting them while still being able to afford to make my own clothes. Obviously its incredibly fashionable and soon everyone will be doing it. In the bigger picture if everyone here learns to sew again maybe we will become more sustainable and fabric will be more affordable.

I'm soon to branch off into free enterprise but for now....I'm leaving for Samos tomorrow!
Please give us some money or see you around the TARDIS sometime soon to buy something!

https://www.gofundme.com/reclaim-the-seas

Joan, Babs and Shelagh too, Zoo, Southside Center, 14.55 until the 31st Aug

I'd never been abducted before and there's not much I can say about it but I first heard about Joan, Babs and Shelagh too at CD Maxima, another Concious Theatre production.  It was laced in secrecy but did involve psychological games which left you thinking for yourself.  Blindfolded and led by a troupe of Guantanamo bay like guards, with altered white y fronts for balaclavas, we were taken around Edinburgh in blacked out vans and Taxi's, never knowing what was real or not but I'll not divulge too much.  We were sworn to secrecy, ( I don't want them to come back in the middle of the night!)  I should include that there was an instance that even the authorities were convinced by the charade.  They had attended the scene along with the chief of Police.
it wasn't far off what Robert Anton Wilson and his cronies were up too! Fnord!

It was on the way back that I'd met the director and producer of the show, gemskii, she was also doing a show in a blacked out venue in the Southside center.  I'd didn't know what I'd be seeing but I knew I'd like it.  Joan Littlewood? I'd never heard of this woman and we were encouraged from the start that this didn't matter.  And it didn't, we had a run through of her life, from her turbulent life as a illegitimate child abused by her alcoholic mother, to her wandering the streets and lanes of England until she landed, through chance, at RADA in London.  This performance was acted out in the first person, the second person, narrated by everyone involved, but somehow with only one woman.  I had judged that this would be clever but I never expected everything.  Joan Littlewood was something of a revolutionary, setting up the first ever theatre union and travelling Europe during the war.  Shadow puppet dancing was included to describe her relationship with Ewan MacColl and there was an awesome impersonation of Barbara Windsor.  Even this was fascinating and her character explained how even though this woman, Joan, was a 'bitch' she liked working for her, the character study was pretty amazing and the fact that it was complemented by a massive wig made it funny. The show had been more serious up to this point and it demonstrated the many talents of gemskii.  I knew little about Bab's either apart from the Carry On movies and her work on the BBC's Eastenders.  It was nice to sit here and learn more of her and her past.  This show really had everything and was run at the last minuet by one woman.  You can see that she has grit and determination, something she probably had before but is something we can all learn from the story of Joan Littlewood. I loved this show you can buy tickets here.

Mark Thomas at Edinburgh Fringe 2015

I’d spent the past two weeks working my way into gigs for free and I was pretty worried that Mark Thomas was going to be one of the more tricky additions.  Having been axed from my unpaid position at DIY festival blog 'the mumble' I figured that I'd be hitting the free fringe train if I was going to be practicing my brand of journalism.  Mark was doing a free talk at Word Power Books in Newington so I headed over there to a crammed room.  Its events like this that let you know who the good guys are.  Aye, Marks selling books right enough but he's always had an unprecedented drive toward making change in the world while he's at it.  Doing free things like this is one way of proving this, especially when your main gig is selling out on every occasion.

Mark Thomas at Word Power Books

Thomas isn't your regular stereotypical ‘A’ wearing anarchist, he disguises the word in a sea of political knowledge that many people don't associate with it.  He describes some of his associates and one of them happens to be with potential Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who he had just been photographed with along with fellow comedian Mark Steel.  At this event, in this tiny but brilliantly stocked book shop, Mark talks of his excitement generated by the recent Scottish Referendum and the even more recent Labour leadership race.  Being an anarchist he reaches out to those things he perceives as having the highest likely hood of social change, veering away from capitalism, and it is interesting that Corbyn has latched on to such comedians while at the Edinburgh fringe. After years of Tory liar Labour, Corbyn is a breath of fresh air.  Although he is entrenched in the Labour Party he seeks the approval of those who appreciate Marks words.  One perfect, unpremeditated and wordy response in how Thomas perceived the referendum was 'it wasn't about tracing your ancestors back to the peaty soil of Skye,' and it's true for us Scots it wasn't about that, why would it be.  In fact his words included 'absolutely fantastic' and that's coming from a London centric.

Mark lists his influences as comedians such as Dave Allen, Alexie Sayle and Peter Cook.  Punk rock music, particularly Crass and the Fluxus art movement of the 1960's.  All of these being political in nature it becomes obvious that this humorous and artistic view into world of politics had begun at an early age.  He professes that it was Dave Allen that taught him what apartheid was when he had appeared on television.  He'd asked his own Dad what is was all about but I know how hard it was directing such questions to an adult in the eighties, far less in the 70's!  T.V., for all its flaws, finds its way to be a teacher.  Mark uses this as an opportunity to introduce his book, 'As used on the Famous Nelson Mandela,'(2007) the gritty and frightening world of the arms trade.  He then introduces 'The People's Manifesto,' (2010) which brims over with hilarious ideas for new political policies coming directly from his audiences.  At this stage we see a transformation in the style of performance and data collection.  It turns into being more about getting people to think for themselves instead of going out into a dangerous world to gather it, and it’s funny, really funny.  That's what is so great about Marks kind of humour and all this has to stem from his political beliefs.  He is taking these ideas and putting them in books, he doesn't profess them to be his own however.  He admitted to me that he was vain the other day, as in he reads all his own tweets.  A truly vain person would have kept all those ideas for his own, but he is happier laughing and being part of the group.  Names of places and people reeled out so that the credit becomes shared.  This lack of self-centeredness was in evidence at his show at the fringe last year.  Even after being betrayed by a friend, who was working undercover to infiltrate his group, vengeance didn't overcome him.  Exposing the system that created the problem became the issue.   This is true even in his writing, just as much as he likes to take centre stage it's always about a much bigger picture than just himself and I get to see this put into action again at his show, Trespass.

Mark at Tresspass +Summerhall 

 Suddenly while sitting in Edinburgh's Summerhall we are slapped back down in London.  But Mark has maps and beautiful descriptions of these places that he loves and walks around. He talks about many of my favourite things, performance art, Guerrilla Gardening, the KLF and Gonzo journalism so even though I've not spent much time in London it's not going to matter, I know where he's coming from.  He notices over time how public spaces are gradually getting stolen by gated communities and corporations, this isn't exclusive to London.  Edinburgh has its fair share of this kind of thing going on.  What better way to object to these things than by taking them back, and if you’re going to take them back then let’s do it in a ridiculous way.  The actions Mark describes take on a surreal bent, it’s a lot like what Withnail would be like if his concerns were less to do with alcohol and more to do with making the world a bit more fair and Marks Londoner accent does seem to chime along with that of stoner Danny from the movie.  We are witness to him naming his friends, people he wouldn't be without once again and although he's in the centre of it all it’s not just about him. He even names the projectionist by name and it was endearing to me that this was a mate of mine, Chris. He'd been at the door as I'd tried to sneak in and gave me a hug. I'd been a bit worried Mark would be disappointed at my lack of ability at sneaking in (the show is called Trespass after all) but I'd have to admit the girl collecting tickets was just way to on it for any Jedi mind tricks this time round.  

 He describes playing a game of cat and mouse at The Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters in London and really winds the door staff there up.  Walking around a restricted triangle of asphalt instead of on it, and getting his friends to join in at a later date.  He heads to Oxford where the council plans to ban buskers from the most central part of the city.  He draws with chalk round said line capturing the attention of city officials before heading into town where 'I must not write with chalk on the pavement' ends up being exactly what is written all over the pavement.  Not just by himself but by crowds of people, including a school from Poland whose teacher said it would be good for their English.  This is true in more than one way.  Later he dresses up as Shaun the sheep, jogging, only to get arrested but I guess this is what happens when people know you are Mark Thomas.  They know it’s bound to be a protest, even if it wasn't the intention you've been able to do so many annoying things to the establishment that they see you coming from 50 miles away.  A sad, sad state of affairs, but I guess that why these shows, or performances, can just keep on getting sillier and for Mark I'm sure he's going to take great enjoyment in all of this.  Being that he is an inventive person I can’t see it stopping anytime soon.  Like the spoon in the Matrix the law is only there to be bent in Thomas' mind and with the police as well as the NHS and fire service taking cuts they could probably all do with the help of those that oppose what’s becoming increasingly monetary based corporate law.  Mark leaves the stage dripping with sweat.  The show is testament to his passionate response to this world that we find ourselves and I couldn’t rate it more highly.

To try to work round the fringes of the law and to try to capture the imagination of others while doing so is a way to get people to participate in cultural change. By encouraging people to think differently. To show what is possible and try and demonstrate how society is failing vulnerable people in favour of the monetary benefit of a few is what Mark is telling us by producing this show.  It's a statement about how life can be a lot better by working together, by not dismissing people because of their flaws.  In a failing system sometimes laughter is the only way to deal with things.  Everyone has something valuable to give and it’s important to recognize those people who sometime give too much to their own detriment.  Mark Thomas is a perfect example of a person who has managed to strike a balance with these things and he will always be one of my hero's, thanks Mr. Thomas for being one of the good guys! 

If you've read this far Mark then I thought you might appreciate this, this is the cop I photographed last year during the fringe when we were demonstrating against the bombardment of Palestine, thought he might be a contender for the arsey pigs calendar.  Me and my cousin just ended up getting right up his nose by constantly asking for the phone number of the tattooed one behind him.  In fact I'd go as far as to say we attempted stalking him, it was very funny walking up to the vans and giving a description of him to be told that he wasn't going to be out that day.  I've no doubt he was hiding in a van some place.  Thanks so much for allowing me to review your show.  It was brilliant and restored my faith in art actions!

David Cameron sucks!