Number nine.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. - Jubkins Lossletops.

[That is, of course, a rationale that if taken seriously can just as easily be used to defend the worst kinds of violent fascism.]

We didn't dream at all, actually, managing to nab about twelve hours of sleep over three days, despite this being one of the better organised of our trips across that stretch of tarmac and furrowed field so flummoxing to island minds such as ours: Europe.

The street and shop signs may well have been in English. We have no idea.

The way we were it's entirely possible that we just drove to the end of the road and started hanging out the doors of the van in fits of jelly-bodied childishness, imagining entirely our exploits; taking the blue sky below us inverted as the sea of the ferry crossing and the pressing faces and queries as standard side-effects of being over there where things are upside down.

No, we went to Zurich.

Fifteen hours only evented (events must happen on a fifteen hour journey, lest the minutes and their tiny drills with which they bore into every imperfection in your powdering skull finally take hold and turn you into an ant farm; hollow chronological threads extended through only bad memories and becoming the very mercurial substance of every grim reflection upon reality that such sojourns in cold and leaky vans allow) by a couple of stops at which we dealt with some surprisingly friendly faces of authority. The police stops are always more fun than the customs stops, which are, of course, customary.

Looks like I got a wink or two last night, doesn't it?

Oh yes, I'm refreshed.

'Pop a few more like that in, Tim, and I might start to enjoy myself!'

And you might think it takes thought to take a tangential turn such as that (and this), but the fact is, as I'm sure you've anticipated, those words have been so aurally scarred into the upper corners of the room in which I'm flopping this log out that their inclusion is actually a concession to the world's impetuousness in forcing its collectively unsatisfied will on my ever frowning frame.

They look at you different when you say you are a musician, and I am not sure if it is pity or a kind of orgasmic awestruck effect at the kind of being they are presented with.

The officers of the law, I mean.

Despite the long hair, despite the eyes that looked like engorged flies dead on top of the poisonous strawberries that inspired their gluttonous passing into the great family picnic or dog shit in the sky, we made our preparations, for a great lol.

'Sunglasses off, lads.'

'Just look friendly.'

'Be quiet, Tim.'

And they took a quick check and let us pass, peering into my little porthole at the rear and judging that everything was alright, as I smiled and waved along with Seryn.

Me and Seryn waving at you through a grubby window in a shaky van.

You wave us on, unwilling to face your fear that the actions of the world upon itself may be far more broad than you ever dared imagine.

The world must be knowable, else all is lost.

-

I mean, everything was quite nice. We had rooms with beds in and a bit of booze here and there and a couple of friendly faces and smiles and helpful people and clean streets...

But the main thrust of the journey, for me at least, was the inducement of a static-caravan of sanity that parked somewhere on our collective neural carriageways but was kept at bay from the town centre of our actual minds.

The road – in particular the sheer length of it – transforms you from debonair fellow-about-the-scenes into a kind of travelling circus animal; locked away until it's time to piss or go and forage for food. And there is no food, because you have no money. So it's always the worst of the world's cuisine. Food as an additive to vehicle fuel; sold alongside it as an afterthought, to trick you into thinking you're hungry for cheese behind that wheel.

I had no idea at any point whether I was hungry or not, but the 'eat or else maybe die' aspect of being alive kicked in to full gear. And that's what I'm talking about. That's what driving on threadbare gets you: a complete change in psyche. The world mauls at the window like car wash brushes while your world consists of 32GB of music and another book, and watching that little real life television bring trees to a kind of psychedelic life while you, again, look back on every poor decision you made when you were twenty-three; why you thought you were right then, and why you are right now in a way you weren't then, and why you will be wrong in the future, but how you will also be right because of being wrong now, and how right that is.

But

but

but

then you

have the pleasure of complete arrival at your destination. When you have arrived at the venue and you have completed your sound-check and packed and unpacked and been shown around and shown the fridge and the backstage and given the codes and told all and wherewithal and whom then then then you have the pick of the place, and every luxury afforded you. Your status is entirely reversed from forager to one whom people will forage for in order to attend to. And suddenly you are brokered a million cigarettes and freshly iced beer cans and little molten gems of amber whisky in exclusive surroundings. And friendly smiling faces that stay static, and don't just brush by with the ferns. And suddenly, after being spun around in your office chair with your tie wrapped around your head, it is whipped off, and you make your way to your big birthday cake that someone balanced on top of the photocopier, next to the gin and pornography.

But this happens over the course of days, and is eked out in slow motion.

And you spend the last few dulling moments of it at the hotel breakfast, still dizzy, still sleepless, shovelling more pig meat and cheese into your now rotten gullet because you know what's ahead.

And then from the warm hotel lights and dizzy swim of every party, the van door slides shut again and SLAM. The world by accident becomes a little greyer and caged again and you start to smell the seats that smell like seats and you are locked in tupperware again.

And in the ride on the way home the weather is bad. So at the back end of the great white elephant you're travelling in you feel like a rubber raft on the back of a speedboat; your stomach lurching over every change in direction to correct for crosswinds, water leaking in through the roof, brain crunching into an emergency filtered state and then relaxing again, all through the fog of a hangover quilted only by a layer of alien-magic Burger King milkshake that had you laughing four minutes after first drinking it. Full of something not from here. Full of the thing that holds the air together, I'm sure. A baffling drink that could only make me think of Milhouse and Bart and their all syrup Squishy, or the millions of people who currently use amphetamines recreationally.

And then its dark.

It was night.

And I got sleep.

And now I'm doing this.

And now we'll keep doing the album, until the next one.

And I'll buy a cushion.

Have fun,

Tim

P.S. It's Trewin's birthday.

Trewin: setting fire to your computer screen.

 

8:14, if you use the twelve hour format.

Goodbye then, 2013.

You were the year of Bloodworks, of Red, of Croatia, of Heaven, and that misunderstanding behind the bike shed.

You were a year of joy, of happiness, of getting no sleep thanks to the Auto-bahn, of swimming in Lake Bled, of that My Bloody Valentine gig.

You were a year of pain, of frustration, of nearly-theres, of not-quite-rights, of bumbling bundles and of misplaced bass notes that ruined the whole song but that’s OK nobody noticed oh no hang on they’re all looking at me just look at the keyboard and pretend you didn’t do anything wrong oh shit what note are we on oh god I think it’s an F# but if I’m wrong it’ll sound so much worse than it already is 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 OK it’s the chorus coming up just relax get back and retrack the phatness yes there we are.

Oh shit no that’s not it where the hell are we oh yeah we don’t play the studio version when we do it live that’s ok just dance like you’re really into it don’t go red don’t go red have a drink ok move your arms and stuff move your neck in a really jerky way that’s cool.

Oh good the gig’s over who was in the crowd? Oh shit oh well they probably didn’t notice because I covered so well oh no hang on I’m still in my house I didn’t leave the house well OK let’s play video games then.

Oh no I just woke up in the hospital apparently the crowd came up onto the stage and knocked me out for wrecking the gig that’s OK we didn’t get an offer from the record people but the WWE want me so at least I’ll be richer than these other fuckers who can’t even make it sound good when their bassist is playing all the wrong notes and knob out all over that shop.

Oh no they’ll probably read this now what have I said I must learn some self control .

We can’t wait for this year. Everyone’s feeling it. I don’t know if this is just a feeling that everyone gets at this time of year, and I’m just applying it to our situation, but still...I can feel it.

Hopefully you can, too.

I saw in the new year with some good friends, in the rain, all of whom were wilfully helping a complete stranger who had passed out in the street and was throwing up copiously on himself. Honestly, I preferred it to spending that moment in the company of sweaty-armed strangers, my beautiful face pressed against their pits, and getting the funny eye from that guy hanging around the bar, playing with his belt buckle.

But then, I have an odd sense of humour/the good life.

I’m tired.

More EP news, soon enough.

Have a good one. Get back  to it, and all that.

Tim

Diary here.

On encouragement from others, I kept a diary of our journey through Europe. 

There’s an awful lot in there, as the trip took us up and down, through highs and lows, through frowns that broke our teeth and cheers that changed the direction of oncoming ships.

For now, I have here decided only to hint at portions of it. Still, that gives you all another reason to look forward to my eventual demise. The fully published diary will no doubt be offered as a free gift on the front of the Sunday Sport (by that time a well respected literary journal) on the day of my death, or at least mentioned in my obituary as some kind of lost treasure - the whereabouts of which will then be left to rumour and perhaps the subject of a new Indiana Jones adventure. (Hint: I’m going to protect the diary with a five headed AI double-cyborg Wolf-man, which can only be defeated by being buggered. That ought to teach Harrison Ford a lesson.)

It’s difficult to even try and fit those ten days (is that all they were?) into any self-contained…thing. There’s just so much there: not being listed here. I won’t do that. Instead I’ll take them as they come. Like a sexual health nurse.

Before that: the news. Three gigs this week: Tuesday, St. Wednesday, Thursday. Prince Albert, Old Blue Last, The Hope. Brighton, London, Brighton. Fun, Fun, Fun. We’re well up for it.

All relevant info, and the new shop, is all on www.phoriamusic.com, in case you weren’t aware. You are now, so there’s no excuse not to bookmark it and visit it every day, like a postman.

Day 2

Tuesday 6/7/13

Location: A small rest area beside the German Autobahn.

8:07 am

We have woken up to the sound of grasshoppers trying to drown out the rumble of the road. We stopped last night somewhere South of Frankfurt, the night-time’s driving becoming nothing more than a rolling screen, like a repetitious background from an old Scooby-Doo cartoon. I drove for about four hours – successfully resisting the right-hand urge to pull off into oncoming traffic…

Jeb and Rory have set-up camp outside. Jeb approached the van last night with a look of distilled fear in his eyes. A strange man sat watching he and Rory pitch their tents; one hand holding a cigarette, and Jeb insisting: ‘I know what his other hand was doing.’

8:36 am

It cannot be uncommon for people to wonder if certain public conveniences are more or less sanitary than having a member of the public defecate directly onto your face.

22:16 pm

Achingly tired. This may not make much sense. We’re in the van, in a campsite beside Lake Bled in Slovenia, drinking beer bought from the most perfectly situated branch of LIDL in the world. [photos will surface].

Slovenia so far has been…[the word ‘beautiful’ has been removed here] Mountains border your view at every turn. They vary from lush and green to sheer rock cliff faces, cold and cracked and aged. We drove through Austria to get here. This is so difficult to describe – partly because of fatigue.

I watched the landscape fold itself up like paper. The mountains, near and far, traverse each other as you pass them. The awe at each turn is the sense of creation on an industrial scale. The bridges rest on the legs of giants. Earth, above and below, shows off like an attention seeking child: petulant and resourceful. Grand, but nothing more than crude, quarried bumps. I felt as though I had been thrown into nature’s bosom.

We held our breath for 2km through a tunnel that burrowed underneath one of the mountains, gasping only briefly in a five second flash of light - as we returned to the vacuous caverns, lit through slits in the omnipresent green of the fir trees - to scream ‘WOAH!’ and then plunge back into a tube of sensory deprivation.

It was grand, and so inhuman. I do not know how to take it all in.

I feel like a bag with a hole in the bottom.

And that’s your lot for now.

Have a great day, whichever mountains you travel through in a van.

Tim

Just a quick meaningless gag.

You are driving a respectable, worn around the edge little minivan across the German Autobahn, 9pm. Daylight begins to fade, but is not yet relieved of its post. A friend arrives in front of you; not swerving, not lurching, but gliding perfectly along, buzzing about you like a house-fly.

It tells you to follow it, winking blue lights in your eyes. It arcs off the road like a pure white skimmed pebble.

You stop beside the relentless flow of sparkling little cars, calming the growl of the fat old engine you’ve been pumping all this time.

‘Hallo.’

‘Hallo.’

‘Passports?’

A smile, a check, and a passport, and you are asked to step out of the vehicle. These are two young, plastic men dressed in blue. Their tool belts are spiked and encircle them like little helpers holding hands. One of the helpers you nickname ‘Mr. Gun.’

You stand between the two plastic men, feet together, arms out to your side, face to the sky with eyes closed, as requested.

‘Left!’

You tentatively touch your left index finger to your nose.

‘Right!’

Your right index.

‘Left!’

Here we are again.

‘Left!’

You’re not getting caught out by that.

An uncomfortable assault and a torch is probed into your eyes. Other empty pools of black approach you with the inspection of a judge, not doctor.

They insist on water.

‘But I am dry.’ You say. ‘I cannot make it rain, no matter how I dance.’

‘That is OK’ says one of the plastic men, ‘we will wait.’

You try once. They say they need only a drop or two. In the desert, despite the heat, despite the dry, you force, prying from the scale of an imagined large mirage, a single, fearful teardrop.

You offer it to them like a wretch, caught up in the afterglow fervour after a witnessed sacrifice. The rich men have slaughtered their goats, the blood has been spilled and the temple is empty. Now here you are, a syphilitic rat in your hands, bargaining with the Gods.

‘No. We need more.’

In your transport are your friends. They laugh. They give you spirit; instruction. ‘Just relax.’ They say. You can relax, but one cannot go swimming if one cannot find the sea. I take a glug from awkward crumpling bottles. The plastic men, despite their frowns at your failure to provide, are impressed by your ability to drink very large quantities of water in a very short period of time in order to provide a urine sample in a roadside test for two fully armed German police officers, who have already asked you ‘When is the last time you took x. Have you had any y.’, truthfully answered by you, you little stereotype, you. But you are no killer. You may be another foolish statistic, but not of that type.

Now, the jig. Minutes squeeze themselves in between one another. Another seat can be made in the theatre for those little things to catch a glimpse. ‘Excuse me,’ they say ‘We know the more of us we are, the more we have to wait, but still: this, we all must see.’ You feel their stacked gaze. Their glittering eyes still sparkle in the furthest distance: twinkling headlights.

Jig, jig, jig.

A raindance.

You drink more water.

There is more silence.

More time.

‘OK’, you say.

Again the bush, beside a truck, watched over by an overly airbrushed photograph, plucked from a magazine. You will it, hard. You will for rain so hard you almost cause thunder, and dark clouds. Eventually, it spits. It falters. Clouds appear, and you pack the glass with a thick punch. You are happy to meet your accusers eyes, to place into their hands a warm and aromatic little statement of your innocence.

‘Don’t drink it all at once.’ You say. They smile, and run back to their little bug, scrambling in the back seat.

Your friends blow air with the other judge. Talking about Reggae? They think they know us. They think they have our number. They think they have your number, and know that it is up. They can already see your luscious locks [sic] streaming behind them through a rear window. Perhaps they will eat you for lunch, or wax their tacky badges with your fat.

You watch, now. Your overseer sprinkles the ashes of your anxiety over a pretty bingo board.

‘This line is for alcohol,’ he informs you. ‘this one for THC Marijuana, this one for amphetamines, this one for opiates…this one is the clear line. If you get this, you are OK.’

The strip is aligned vertically, the C line, your target, at the top. You feel weak as he tests your strength.

You wait.

Everybody waits.

You know what will happen, but still there is a part of you that wonders from the facts – the part that continues to look down known empty roads. This is the part that checks the tickets twice, then three times, in case those first two touches were mere perceptive assaults of the imagination; water displaced by an invisible finger.

This part thinks that you will fail. This is it, now. You are banged up like a chicken. Big Mary, grasshopper to your wallflower, watches you sleep. An unknown judgement from an unknown tongue. They have the proof that you’ve been spiking poppies, sinking ships, burning down greenhouses and drowning your inner-child, all before tackling the rapids. ‘It’s a full house,’ you imagine them saying, ‘you are the most fucked up person we’ve ever had, and we’re going to have to glue all of your skin together to restrain you, then peel it off with a machine when we drag you to the…’

Oh no, hang on. No - it’s negative. You’re clear. Again, you knew you were.

Plastic taps and shuffles, quickly. Brows furrow and faces fall. The feet do not encroach now, and the bobbling heads do not tower above yours. The legs lean at an angle, and a casually outstretched hand offers you a package.

‘Your passports and license.’

‘Thanks.’ You say. They do not return it, but instead about face and slide, simultaneously, back into their floating little nipper.

--

Somewhere, deep in the Austrian mountains through which you have just driven, you imagine there is a laboratory, thick and gleaming with steel and chrome. The vaults in which the white-coats work stretch up for hundreds of metres, closed off from heaven.

‘Sir!’

The assistant runs across the sterile floor to the bald, bespectacled man. Footsteps echo above and around like displaced dust, his jacket flows out behind him; cold, resistant air.

‘Sir!’

A red biro teeters from end to tip and rattles as it hits the floor. The assistant, breathing deeply, stops still. The bald man turns, his wet, beady eyes fixed on the boy.

‘What is it, Alexander? Why must you consistently distract me from my work?’

‘Sir,’ the assistant splutters through rushing gusts of breath ‘they’ve found a match. The General says the project is to continue immediately.’

The bald man’s shoulders relax, a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. His eyes turn wetter still. A single tear. He tries to hold it in, but cannot.

‘…after all these years.’

The bald man turns from his assistant, and opens a small control panel. There’s a boop beep beep, and soon a loud hiss of steam. Upon one wall, the clouds from giant pneumatic pistons condensate in mid air, some rising up to coat the inside of the mountain, the strength of steel still giving way to rock and tightly packed earth as it nears the top. A little water drips down the unfathomable distance, and the bald man raises his face to it, refreshed and cleansed by the cool drops.

A brushed, silver panel struggles to shift its weight. The laboratory shudders. Some of the little bodies run and hide, but the bald man stays, the thunder under his feet rising up through his body to stimulate his powerful brain. Perhaps twenty seconds, and the sound of riot stops. The echoes can be heard from here, spreading out like ripples on water. Above and outside of the mountain, birds burst into flight.

A squeak of shoes of wet floor, and a tap and a splash of well cobbled soles. A hard faced woman in a black suit steps across the laboratory to the bald man, not a glance for his assistant.

‘Here it is, Professor.’ She says.

A dirty liquid in a little plastic cup.

‘Is this all they could manage?’ the bald man says.

The steam clears, and the three little people stand before a wall, not of bricks, but of bodies. Perfectly suspended - each in his own amber - the long haired, preciously pale little urchins line up in rows and columns. A scanner hovers, flown on little blades, and begins to check the status of the artefacts. The information flows downstream. The lights rush to attention. The numbers on the screen rise and rise. The signal is green. The woman in black leaves the room without looking back. The bald man and his assistant must crane their necks to take in the wealth of flesh they now have to play with. The picture stretches out to infinity.

‘I have never…’ gasps Alexander.

‘I have.’ Says the bald man with a smile.

Behind the two agog, resting against against one wall of the laboratory, there lies a rusty bass guitar.

‘Go and get an amplifier, Alexander,’ the bald man says, ‘The mountains shall shake tonight.’