It begins

You have reached the end of the Somebody's Old Tat blog.

You haven't really, it's the start.

I set this up to encourage myself to write rather than rot like the speed eater in Taxidermia, gradually fusing with my chair.

To begin with, here's something I wrote on one of my albums of last year, 'Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age':

Wind-up toys chatter in a strangely-lit nursery, then: “Raaah rah raaah, raaah rah raaah”, intones Trish, her eyes misted white with second sight as she whirls around the secondary modern science lab. In her right hand she holds a telescoping pointer that swishes metronomically in time with her theme. Amorphous blobs of multicoloured lights overlay the tableau, along with animated symbols and patterns from Open University textbooks, spelling out an arcane ritual. The last ruse of a collapsing Keynesian consensus, ironically enlisting its children’s mysticism as its very English modernism comes under attack from a far more zealous and altogether noxious formation. Or perhaps this is a doomed but beautiful attempt, by way of musty excavation, to magick that world back into being. Whatever the case, it’s hard to avoid basking in the aureole created where these two strategies reach forward and backward into each other.

Then you’re listening to spam fritters teatime hidden in the wall. No, you’re walking down the high street as an Austin Traveller roars past. To your left, a wall of TVs in the window of Rumbelows are blaring out the Rubettes’ ‘Sugar Baby Love’ and...and...somehow you’re trapped in the picture, the glam thrust unbearably loud as you microscopically shin up Mick Clarke’s leg to safety, yowling in hallucinogenic terror.

A moment of calm. Krauty ascendance into space is followed by the local pervert’s swagger through a scrubby patch of grass, bushes and dubious carrier bags which passes for a recreation ground. And...the lark ascends, the east wind blows, the seagulls chatter and a toothy gentile who you met on the promenade demonstrates his amateur pastime on the Moog. We are transported, though not physically at this stage, to a sun-dappled glade. An ancient pagan Englishness which says, “I’m only perverse because you’ve repressed me. I’m not the parish.” You try and process this information but it gives you a slight headache. Your afternoon nap is disturbed by the strains of Science Workshop and a creeping sense that something is not quite right. Someone’s holding your hand now. The fever breaks, and the dales roll and undulate, an oscillator thrumming in the background.

Reconvened theosophy séance in a pebble-dashed council house on a windswept moor. Dusty cardboard boxes with more memories than you can reasonably be expected to recall. A few doors down is the old lady with denture breath and long, fine white hair that you’ve only once seen out of its tight bun. Tea in a willow pattern cup and saucer, untouched. A segment of suburb you never knew existed. Playing with children you don’t know out of obligation. A panel missing on the streetlamp. Everyone’s against you. Time to rebel. Drop a tab. Chew this thing you found in a field.

Time passes.

Euphoria attempts to set in. Everyone’s yapping and mithering. Analogue signal. They’re not tuned in at the greengrocer’s. Your mum’s friend’s shed is more like it. Wandering through the woods at the end of the garden down a path seldom noticed. It’s getting dark. A derelict mansion rears up. The windows are aflame, gothic and certain. The stars are out and floppy-bodied freaks with long smelly hair are cavorting in the grounds. “Yeah!” they drone. “Come join us!” Abandoned pots of lentils, scum caked around the rim. Is that the vicar running down the corridor in suspenders, laughing like an eighteenth century lunatic?
The Birds is on in the other room.

It’s the next morning. Or the morning after. Someone who understands is singing a lullaby. The glade beckons. You know you can’t stay. There’s a nest above you. BANGBANGBANGBANG. The doorknocker shocks everyone from their reverie into a unified moment of pure clarity. The rozzers. A final dose of the horrors.

In the parlour, trinkets and tat in an ‘heirloom’ cabinet. Bought at Affleck and Brown’s in the sale. Afternoon tea for show. Something dreary on the radio. Your mind drifting to that violent film you saw last week. Kicking up a right stink. Or the night at the funfair. What’s that sorry?

Back down the high street, we need teabags, luncheon meat, a pint of milk, two turnips. Don’t forget my Dunhills. You won’t forget. You hear that voice. The sunlight slants down and you smile.