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!