Windscreenhenge

Went away to the countryside this weekend, out towards Salisbury to track down ancient monuments.

Sadly, I missed the turn off to our hotel and a few moments later, in very slow moving traffic, the back windscreen of my Smart Car shattered. Apparently it happens quite often in older model Smarts where the demister heating element has such a shape that stresses build up and then cause a catastrophic failure.

As Monty Python taught us with Mrs. Niggerbater, well, things explode every day?

Although, for me, it kind of put a dampener on the whole weekend. The weather was pretty shite too.

The insurance mob were unable to do anything speedily, what with Smart car back windscreens not quite being an 'off the shelf' part, and it being a goddamn bank holiday weekend so no one really wanted to scour the nation's car parts depots looking for the blasted thing anyway. So, instead we soldiered on to Stonehenge and after discovering that the entrance fee was £6.90, we went and had a look at Woodhenge instead.

Torrential rain soon followed, I patched up my back windscreen hole with Lidl cardboard and we retired to the hotel for Eurovision.

The next morning, under beautiful sunshine, I drove back to London with my tail between my legs.

Does shisha kill?

This is interesting, from the BBC news site:-

Smoking a shisha pipe is as bad for people as smoking tobacco, the Department of Health and the Centre for Tobacco Control Research has found.

People who smoke shisha, or herbal tobacco, can suffer from high carbon monoxide levels, its research revealed.

It found one session of smoking shisha resulted in carbon monoxide levels at least four to five times higher than the amount produced by a cigarette.

High levels of carbon monoxide can lead to brain damage and unconsciousness.

When I was wandering through Regents Park today I saw a woman parked up with a pram and a shisha pipe thing having a sook, and I wondered how come there's no great clampdown on such things as there is for smoking.

So, here scientists have shown that you get high carbon monoxide levels, but thats not quite the same as cigarettes. Cigarettes give some people lung cancer and some people die of it. A greater proportion of people who smoke cigarettes die of lung cancer than people who don't smoke cigarettes, so great a proportion that cigarette smoking gets banned, pubs close, society collapses.

But that's very different to this shisha thing, no one's saying that smoking shisha causes a death. That's not what the news story says. The news story says quite specifically that shisha just increases carbon monoxide levels.

"If my mum sees me smoking shisha, she isn't going to take it as seriously as if I was smoking cigarettes," said a British Pakistani man.

It was this misconception - and finding dangerous levels of carbon monoxide in a pregnant woman who had stopped smoking tobacco, but continued to smoke shisha - which prompted the research.

"We found one session of smoking shisha - that's 10 milligrams for 30 minutes - gave carbon monoxide levels that were at the lowest four and five times as high as having a cigarette," said Dr Wareing.

Has anyone ever died from shisha smoking? Has it ever been found to be the cause of death?

I doubt it.

Haircut

Before









and After

TheESSEX

Where is Wickford?
Where is Shenfield?

What do these places mean? What should they mean to me?

There's engineering work on the trainlines so I have to get a replacement bus on my way east to visit the niece, my brother and sister-in-law. Its a warm day, you are my indian summer, maybe the last of the year, the citizens of Wickford and Shenfield are out with their friend nd loved ones, drinking and holding. I am on buses and trains on my own, scribbling.

It didn't have to be this way.

Months ago I bought a new mobile phone, a Sony Ericsson K800i, with the intention of being able to send emails and update my various blogs whilst out and about

Those bastards at CarPhone Warehouse sold me a pudding. Battery life is down to 8 hours now, thats with using it for one phone call and two text messages a week, the memory is too small to surf the web and email is impossible to set up. The wee cover of the camera is badly designed, it keeps sliding open in my pocket and taking photies of my shrapnel. How can something be designed and sold so bad?

Those bastards.

Also my own fault for not taking it back to the shop.

CarPhone Warehouse = bunch of cunts

Sony Ericsson K800i = shittest phone ever

...

A girl sits next to me on the bus, lack of empty seats. She's tall, in her early 20s, blonde hair and kind of stocky. I think I'm in love with her.

Pale skin, small delicate hands, she keeps adjusting her top so it covers the way her tummy bulges over the sides of her jeans.

My mind keeps drifting to wrapping my arms round her, her body soft under my fingers, kissing her neck.

I wonder what she smells like.

Crikey I need a girlfriend.

...

Back to reading this book, The17. Bill, the narrator, has just moved to east London in it.

At exactly the same I was driving to south London from Glasgow.

What went wrong?

Sapp

Everything is covered with dust here, great ideas buried under receipts and post-it notes.

There was a plan to set up a Deep Fried Wolfknuckles covers band called The southside Wolfknuckles. We'd do covers of original Wolfknuckle covers and rockabilly versions of your favourite indiepop hits, I'd recruit members from friends in the nearby indiepop scenes. It never happened though.

I searched the internet, but could fine none, so I asked on Anorak for the chords for The Smittens Sapphire, and duly posted, I tried to record me playing it.

I'm not 100% sure what Soundcloud is, but there should be a widget below which lets you listen to my recording and download it too so you can listen on your ipods when you're out running, and remember our time together, wrapped in each other's arms.

Hmm, the recording kind of cuts out towards the end with a string grate, but doesn't it always end that way?

manc ill kid - Sapphire (Smittens cover) by manc_ill_kid

Enjoy.

Soul

Have signed up to SoulMates on the Guardian websitey thing. Kind of like bowing to pressure, I have my doubts.

My profile is here

My cow orker suggested that getting to the top of the most popular profiles list is something to aim for, so feel free to have a look, call your collegues over and get them to have a look too.

I had to resist the urge to just write about killing people, killing lots of people, in the 'why shoul people get to know me' and 'perfect match' descriptions. I fear being arrested as a murder suspect.

Again

Went jogging last night, after work, round Regent's Park. The flatmate's on a fitness trip, and its funny to outpace her, so if she asks I say yeah sure, and get my shorts on.

It was the third or fourth time in the last week that I've done the jogging thing so I guess I'm back in the tracksuit. Think, think, think...

1992, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006... countless times I've done the fitness thing, going to the gym almost daily, charting my weight change and stamina change, usually during times of acute loneliness and it doesn't help, it doesn't help in the slightest. I run and I run, I push the edge of the curve, then I stagger home on my own, and wonder what the fuck is the point.

I was in the Oh Bar in Camden at the weekend, early afternoon, on my own, about three people in the place, slowly nodding off on a couch. The barmaid was chatting to the other bar guy and said something like "You don't look for love, you find it". It sounds good, but doesn't parse logically.

Anyhoo, I'm not going to find love running round fucking Regent's Park.

Boing

I just got a video covered on BoingBoing. I'm pretty sure it won't last long, someone's going to realise where the 'thanks Chris' hyperlink leads and then it'll be dropped like a rock.

But right now, right now, I'm right there at the top of the 5th most popular blog on the internet. Me, using my own talents and abilities, and a faint wiff of integrity.

But I can feel it, the ground is starting to tremble, that crushing feeling of anti-climax, of failure, of defeat. Of reaching the top, but still not getting the girl.

Still wandering to HDIF on my own, sitting in a corner surrounded by friends, on my own, drinking until I can drink no more, being prodded out to the dancefloor, doing the same as I've done for the past fifteen years, and then staggering home on my own.

This is why I even bother.

Hunger

There is nothing in my tummy. I'm running out of money. My limitless talents are of no help. I wasalmost talked into lending a friend £500 that I don't have, because she was a girl in need and the closest thing I have to a buddy at the moment.

I got home yesterday to find a big old parcel, could it be the Bowlie Round 19 mixCD at long last?


No, it was even better


A friend from the internet's sexblogger community had sent me a load of goodies. Much skipping round the house and making 'eep'noises.

Managed to send off one Just Joans CD, at long last. Only another five to do, then the overwealming waves of guilt will begin to subside.

Ooh, memories of talking to people at a gig the other day. I could do with chatting to people I don't know more often than I do.

I've branched out, inspired by the parcel, I wrote a bit of erotic writing over on the nuddy site. Most of my traffic comes from non-English speaking countries so it could be a bit of a waste, but it was worth a try. Have a strange urge to exorcise daemons by writing more of that sort of thing, but again feel doubt that making up for a lack of social/sex life with fiction can only be wrong wrong wrong.

Who would?

Its a little flattering and at the same time scary, people searching google for Chris Gilmour's diary and then finding it. Wouldn't be so worrying if people left comments saying things like "Hey its's Shiva/Lisa/Arlene/etc, was wondering what happened to you, we should go for coffee, email me at shiva/lisa/arlene/etc@hotmail/google/yahoomail.com/co.uk" or whatever. Or add yersel to my Twitter feed. But nope. Just this feeling of a goldfish bowl like existance, living in the matrix, doing party tricks to keep folk entertained.

So.. here goes

One of the most important lessons learnt from ex-girlfriends was from the ex-wife, I think her phrase was "I don't care what the fucking spreadsheet says, we're not going to start going out again."

Which is a shame cos I did the coolest spreadsheet ever this morning.

Other cool spreadsheets and graphs include the one I sprung today when a coworker said "All you ever talk about is...".

Actually no, I talk obsessively about several things and if you look carefully at this pie chart, there are things I talk about far more. Messageboards for instance, I'll accept that at 25% of the time I'm 'always' talking about messageboards.

On dating

Recently a friend suggested I try the Guardian's Soulmates webiste, I knocked back the idea outright. Its not for me.

And here's why.

I don't struggle at meeting new people. In the course of my extra-curricular activities, both online and in real life, I'm surrounded. Thousands of people check out my websites, hundreds of people read my posts on message boards, dozens of people go to the same gigs as me. At any point I can turn the girl next to me and say "Hey, how's it going, what did you think of that last one.".

I'll accept that starting off the conversation terrifies me, but after that, its plain sailing, I can be rounded and charming enough to carry it off.

So, what is the problem?

Even when out with friends, I sit at the side, or stand at the back keeping quiet, gazing into the distance, or into my pint, sometimes my mind travels in time. It takes a cattle prod to get me communicating.

I'm not sure how Soulmates will help there.

Since I discovered my cock some time in the mid-nineties, I've have about six relationships that lasted over four months, none more than seven. It worries me, there's something very wrong. I mention it to friends on MSN, my worries. And then every so often in response to me saying something outragous, the friends on MSN will say something like "I can see why it only lasts six months".

I find it patronising and condescending, and it makes me think they're fools. They know nothing of context. I take it too seriously.

Yesterday, I was at Dr Sketchy's, the burlesque life-drawing thing. Keeping quiet at the back with my post-it pad and biro, between drawing tasks, I scrawled a wee list of those lucky lucky 4-7 month relationships and how they ended. And drew a pie chart too. The reasons they ended are diverse, only two reasons non-unique. The most popular reason for splitting up, with 2.5 hits, is 'moved to London'. This shouldn't reoccur, I've implemented corrective action. The second non-unique reason, is my refusal to come back after being dumped and then begged back.

Me saying something outrageous, has never had any bearing on the end of a relationship.

Looking at the list, the other terrifying thing is what could be called the Good Luck Chuck factor. More than half the girlfriends got engaged shortly after we broke up. Never seen the film, but I understand to break the curse I have to hump Jessica Alba. Alas she never returns my calls.

What to do?

Fuck knows.

If I don't shut anything down, or close off any of my options, the possibilities for the future are limitless.

So carry on reviewing gigs, carry on going to geeky internet meetups, carry on drawing pictures, carry on as usual with brief psychotic episodes of frustration, jealousy and anger.

Then again, the friend was also signing up to Guardian's Soulmates herself, so it could have been a round about way of asking me out. But I very much doubt it.

Mouth

Still in agony, woke up twice last night in pain after turning on the wrong side.

Work is okay, but i did get overcome with emotion and had to go and cry in a quiet corner after we managed to get some stuff done on time.

Over on Facebook, Rosie reckons if I change my profile picture I won't remain single for much longer, suggesting first I use a photo of me and my niece, and then an arty black and white one of me playing guitar.

Four hours later and it hasn't had any effect on my singularity, but I do become sad reading facebook.

Over on the nuddy chicks site, after the phenomenal success of my first venture, I'm looking around at work to find a post-it pad to do a quick "YOUR ADVERT HERE $2/week" image of the side column. If you know of anyone who'd want to advertise their wares to around 14,000 people all over the world every week, email me.

Went out last night to meet Rowan and Mark and go on the London Eye, the damned thing closes at 8pm at this time of year so we went to a pub, watched the football and I drank that Fruli's strawberry beer. Its like CAMRA alcopop.

Game raising

Do I raise my game?

On places like the nuddy chicks site, in addition to the handful of pics a day, I also post about politics and random ranting and gig reviews and music and stuff, just keep pushing and pushing. Getting more traffic from more different quarters rather than just the youporn and sex blogger sectors?

The shyness that dogs me in real life, I'd never quite noticed it online, but its there just the same. Whilst I can just about handle getting on stage, standing on a table, waving my arms about and talking any old shit to an audience of thousands, sharing my innermost privacies with half a million net surfers. I can't just chat to folk.

There's a threshold to cross, at NPL or HDIF or Spiral Scratch. I stand in the shadows or sit in a corner, gazing at my pint or stabbing at my phone, until at some point someone says hi, or sense takes over and I get up. This threshold, this threshold.

Its the same online in MSN, Twitter, Facebook et al. I bubble in the corner, distracting myself with the internet, creating and racing, until the threshold gets unbearable and I step over to speak to the folk who've popped up in the bottom right. Other people's comments and links become too ubiquitous and I feel left out to the point of fixing it. The tangible threshold.

IP addresses to, on the statcounter logs, the familiar ones from one day to the next, glancing over whilst I stare at my pint and stab fixedly at my keyboard.

Failed attempt at being.

Its mostly guilt that brings me to Barden's Boudoir tonight. Sure I could claim to be a big fan of Arthur and Martha, but that would be doing a great disservice to Sharon from The Gresham Flyers who spent the best part of an hour working on me last weekend.

Since I've known half the people in the room for half a decade, but save the merest glimmer of recognition from the girl on the door, it counts for nothing. What I get, I have to get myself, like my damned fool plan to have one of the most popular political blogs in the UK, on a whim, because I can.

My car's parked just down the way, this is my first time in Stoke Newington, well, the first conscious time. A mob of locals came yahooing down the street as I locked my car, I swear one was packing heat. I'm only quite sure I'm not some kind of split personality serial killer, avenging some half-imagined crimes of the past, but sometimes I wake up in strange placed covered in blood that isn't my own.

Arthur and Martha on stage, halfway through AutoVia, my favourite song of their's, alas it the final song of the set. 'Arthur' seemed to be rocking out a little more than usual.

Summer festival appearances should be good.

I don't know if I was actively trying, maybe it was just going through the motions, I stood at the front, as near to the speakers as possible without people thinking 'he's standing as close to the speakers as possible', but I didn't hear any of the second band, save the blistering shards of an epic guitar solo and people clapping. Instead, I was in another place.

It was like in geography class or some MRPII meeting, slipping out of consciousness. Faces of girls I'd loved and any tenuous connection they had with the band before me. Memories of seeing them there or photos of the scene, glimpses like from a passing car, from too far away or the wrong side of the room. The stabbing shards of seperation, of missing something very important, of helplessness, of fate and damned bad luck.

Even in my slipping out of lucidity, I knew something was wrong and sought to guide my stream elsewhere to Manchester and Bolton and married life, anything away from the hell I occupied.

But it didn't quite work, the stabbing shafts of reality and it all comes back to east London cutting through. The here and now, crushing on what once was, or what I remember of it.

Even the reaffirming terrible truth that what I remember isn't the same as what actually happened.

The memories are wrong, incorrect, I know that for certain. But they are still the memories in my head, crystal clear, as though it was yesterday, last week, last year or a decade ago. The memories, soured by the truth.

Where the hell are the toilets in here?

I think I saw Das Wanderlust at Indietracks, but I can't for the life of me remember what they sounded like, and it would be unfair to judge them on tonight's performance considering it was mostly "imagine that last song sounded great" on the grounds that the singing girl had lost her voice, and the one song where DJ Waz played the 7" and the mimed along.

There were people behind me who wouldn't stop talking.

If asked what did I think of the evening, in an imaginary conversation with some vague acquaintance who happened to ask, I think in order to improve my quality of life I should have gone to the My Sad Captains single launch instead. I can barely control what goes on in my head, providing rope to hang myself was never going to be good and a better tunes would have been nicer.

Maybe that's unfair.

I think I've made many bad life decisions. I can't quite pin-point any of them, where or when.

Except climbing out of an eleventh floor window in 1997 and deciding to climb back in.


The oddest thing, after the bands I slouched out of the venue to scribble notes in my car, and as I drove away, I wanted to kill myself even more.

ill theatre narative

It was a nice run of strips, two week's worth before I lost my nerve.

To be honest when the storyline started I didn't really have much of a clue, just needed to get out of reality, and into some other world where things happen.

Of course, ever since last year I had this image in my head of leading an army of giant spiders to castle Bowlie whilst it burned, but I wasn't sure how to get there, just random exploring of the internet and chatting to Robster on MSN.

Damned MSN, there's something up with my internet at home, still can't get on MSN or check my email, well, I can use a webmessenger sometimes and I can pick up the email on my fancy new phone, but its not quite the same.

So when the call to return to Bowlie came through, it was a bit of a windfall for the webcomic storyline, seeing old chums again, talking to folk for the first time in years. Like the time travel webcomic from last month, there were tears in mine eyes.

Alas the internet is very different from real life. Some bits looks familiar and with the online presense some bits of real life feel more familiar. It was a weird evening when I wandered back into The Buffalo Bar, the place has the same colourscheme as the messageboard, same folk too, kind of.

Soon the crushing loneliness set in again, its still me under this mask, with the same fears and anxieties, and the same crazinesses.

God knows where the storyline was going, getting up to the blogger balloons to find them empty or something, crazy adventures floating around. I had this idea of visiting the secret garbage continent in the Pacific, welding together a load of lumps of plastic and starting a new civilisation.

Alas, I lost it. As an avatar of the matrix between real life and bowlie, I lost it, thought too hard and couldn't face going on.

It was only after I posted the thing with the balloons, that I realised I was back to the falling motif that I've used a couple of times before on ill theatre. Its like a default state.

So from the artist's side of things, it was a warm and rich world of castles, giant spiders, dinosaurs and balloons, familiar faces and unexplained stuff. But god knows what it looked like to a casual observer or even folk with some depth of perception, was there enough hinted at to flesh it all out. Whilst possibly only folk who were party to an obscure bowlie thread months ago would have got the spiders thing, what would anyone else make of it, just surreal adventure?

Where now?

Back in the office / factory / car, looking down at my coffee and trudging along until the next spark of inspiration carries me away.

Thanks for coming anyway, and thanks.

Highs and Lows of 2007

Highlights of the year 2007 include, rather neatly occasions where there is video footage.

Like the final Deep Fried Wolfknuckles gig at the 13th Note. The covers of You're in a Bad Way, You're like Manchester, and 100,000 Fireflies, tears streaming down my face nd blood pumping out of my finger.




Also the Plimptons invasion of Liverpool for the International Pop Overthrow Festival
The spectacular success of the nekkit chicks website is also an ongoing highligh.

Low points include

That hellish weekend where I both lost my job wih Linn, the girl thing exploding, after drinking all day with Robbie and Colin, necking a bottle of vodka, sleeping for an hour then driving to a Loves gig in London. It still mkes me want to kill myself, and I think has contributed to the bitter and evil man you see before you now. It helps me to feel justified when I'm being a cruel vindictive asshole
In sunny moments I forget and wonder what if... but then it comes back, I bare my teeth and do stuff. Kind of like a little battery of anti-matter.

Hopes for 2008

Something to kind of cancel out the low points of '07, raising my faith in humanity, or possibly just lording over them like dogs.
Oh and buying a sodding house

Mood swings all over the place

So I had the closest I get to a nervous breakdown at the weekend, there's only just so much pointless driving can do before owning a Smart Car doesn't seem quite so environmentally friendly.
Luckily Fiona saved my life by asking me to house-sit for her while she's away on holiday. She as the nicest house, and it'll be all mine for the next week or so. Finally I'll be able to do my laundry and cook food without The Fear. And its closer to town so I can get back in the gig-going tracksuit.

Last night I got my arse in gear making CDs. My room turned into a right little production line.

• CD Burning on on PC


• CD printing on my laptop


• QC on my CD player


• Packaging on my bed


• Drawing pictures whilst waiting on bottlenecks

Got about 10 frames of animation done too, its starting to get easier as I perfect my technique. Rather than tracking points on keyframes, I track blobs. It gives more fluid movement and better scaling.

Also this NSFW
I gotta get out more and see friends.