Tag: whitstable

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Death Whitstable

Tudor Tea Rooms Whitstable

You know how much I love Whitstable?  That would be one of my ‘weak tea‘ successes:  my relationship with Whitstable.

I love it there.  I know everyone.  We really know each other.  For good and for bad.

Well, today I received some very, very sad news.  My Mother‘s friend Carol who owns the Tudor Tea Rooms on Harbour Street…well..and this is terrible…her son Tony died.

Known affectionately as Wally to everyone who knew him, he was only 40 years old, tall, gentle, ran his mother’s business with aplomb.

When you order a pot of tea at The Tudor Tea Rooms you get a pot of tea made with loose tea and a strainer.  Quality.

We used to say that they served school dinners at the Tudor but we loved going in there.  Fire burning in the hearth all winter.  Closed on a Wednesday.  Real steak and kidney pudding with a thick suet crust.

Wally was killed during the day on the train tracks at the end of Glebe Way.  Struck by the coast-bound 11.22am Victoria to Ramsgate train just before 1pm.  I have no idea if he committed suicide or not.  That’s what people are saying but I really don’t want to believe it.

He was such a nice man.  Wally and his sister Sue had run that Tudor Tea Room since they were kids.  Since we were all kids.  Serving Steak and Kidney Pudding…opening the tea garden.  He was the sort of bloke you’d see in Prezzo Pizza Place with his young family.

As every Whitstable pub and every other shop front became yet another super chic gastro pub or seasonal/organic eaterie…the Tudor kept the same decor, the same menu, serving the same Whitstable us who didn’t want the bother of seared scallops or poached samphire.

My Mother and I saw Wally just a few weeks ago when I was home for Christmas.  He served us a good old-fashioned English roast.   My mother mocked me for drinking tea with my lunch…like ‘some one from a council house‘ she said.

He stood at the till and asked after my life in LA.  I felt embarrassed to tell him what my life was like in California.  What he didn’t know…what he could never have known…was what I was thinking that cold December day a week before Christmas:  that I would have quite easily traded my life in Malibu for a chance at running the Tudor Tea Rooms.

From where I was standing…his life looked perfect.

When I was a kid we would sit in the Tudor Tea Rooms and spy on Peter Cushing eating his poached eggs.

Poached eggs on toast.  Every day.

My mother accidentally pushed Peter Cushing off his bike one day when she was getting off the bus from Canterbury.

Anyway, Wally was killed on the railway lines.  The third person killed in the same spot in less than two months.  What’s happening?  What a waste of a good life, a sweet family man.  I feel for his wife and children, his sister Sue and his lovely mum Carol.

If you get the chance listen to this Jellybotty’s track, Peter Cushing Lives in Whitstable.

It mentions the Tudor Tea Rooms.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wpGPqWrjeQ].

Goodbye Wally.

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Death Gay

Catastrophe!

The past few weeks have been really interesting.

Annoyingly I’ve not been able to write about most or any of it and will not be able to in the foreseeable future.

As I have said before, as life gets really interesting the blog becomes less relevant.   Real life interrupts blog life and for that I am very grateful.

Eventually, when I am allowed, I will explode all over the blog and tell all but for the time being I am keeping my BIG MOUTH SHUT.

I am having to be covert.

Presently staying with friends whose main morning preoccupation is to read really bad news out loud off of the internet.  The corruption, the greed and the misery we create around the globe gleefully read out loud to their increasingly cynical children.

Frankly, there is no reason for a young child to have the worst possible news read out to them first thing in the morning as they prepare for school.  Scares them.  Scared me when I was a kid.  All that bad news about nuclear weapons.  I had a recurring nightmare about the atom bomb exploding.  On my own walking home from junior school up Windmill Road, Whitstable just in sight of my family home…when the atom bomb detonates.  A blinding light then a fierce, hot wind.  All I could think about was that I had to get home.  Of course, there was no home to get back to.

Right now my friend is telling her 8-year-old, “Brain damage is linked to cell phone use…”

Like a fairy story.

They had a lunch here on Sunday for two German friends.  A well-known actress and her film industry husband.   Within two minutes of arriving he announced the death of Perry Moore a man I knew in passing from New York.  Perry produced the Narnia films.  Years ago Toby Mott, Noreena Hertz and I had lunch with Perry and Tatum O’Neal at Freeman’s on Rivington when it was hot to have lunch there.  Perry and Tatum were both very drunk and weirdly abrasive.  Terry Richardson joined us for coffee.

Toby Mott, Noreena Hertz and? NYC

I was not shocked to hear about Perry’s death as it was somehow gay inevitable.  His father sadly telling the press that his son was on fine form the day before.  Well, nobody ever expects the death of a healthy young man, no father ever expects to bury his son.

Unless, of course, their son leads a double life.  We live, as gay men, lives away from our loved ones. Compartmentalized, fine one day..dead the next, slumped in the bathroom…oxycotin overdose.   It is too familiar to me.  So sad.

It would not surprise me if Jake ended up like Perry.

Anyway the German made some flip remark about Perry dying and gay people in general.  He didn’t realize that I was gay.  He didn’t realize that I was half Iranian so later made equally racist, inappropriate remarks about Iranian films winning the Berlin Film Festival.

Sometimes you just have to take the bullet so…I challenged him.  Within minutes he was threatening to punch my fag lights out.  His wife apologized for his behaviour.

They left.

Scratch most white Germans and a jackbooted Nazi goose steps out of the wound.

Samia Saouma my Lebanese ex-friend, gallery owner who lives in Berlin and is arguably one of the chicest women in the world was once applying her lipstick in the back of a cab when her white driver told her that she was a rag-head whore who should prepare for her next trick out of his cab.

Nice.

Recently I took down a whole heap of posts from this blog.  Blogs about him.  Removed until they had no internet traction.  Yesterday I reinstated them without his name attached.  Self censorship is not a good thing.  I also reinstated the Angry Reader blog that obviously came from ‘you know who’.

It amuses and disturbs me in equal measure that he would think that every achievement, everything of which I am proud he considers worthless.  This coming from a man who has achieved NOTHING before he was thirty years old (17th May) when I, in comparison, achieved so much!  Much more than anyone ever predicted.

By the time I was thirty years old I had written and directed plays, opened a restaurant, renovated houses, travelled the world.  Christ!   I did all that as well as being mentally ill, making enemies, etc. etc.

Achievement is not to be judged by others but rather owned by oneself.

I know that he gets drunk, stoned and lonely.  I know that deep down he would prefer to resolve rather than reload.  Time will tell.  Time, as I have often quoted, is the greatest distance between two people.

I know that the we he suggests laugh at me has always laughed.  They want me imprisoned or dead.   They condemn me and they condemn my friends for being my friends.

He, on the other hand, may be surrounded by friends, family and lovers but at the end of the day he has to face himself, as we all do, in the mirror.  I saw him wrestle with his conscience.

At that moment when I was most proud of him I should have just walked away.

As for the film?  It takes shape before my very eyes.  Working with CP in quite a different way than I have before.   That’s all I can say.  That’s all I want to say.

I still have no interest what so ever to meet, engage or have sex with any man.

Oscar party week.  I am not involving myself until Saturday.  Kick off festivities with Sharon…we will do the do…the merry dance.   Still, if I am honest, I can’t really be bothered.

I want to make my own film now…not celebrate the achievements of others.

P.S. Tatum O’Neal wouldn’t remember me.   She and Melanie Griffith once broke down together in an AA meeting.  Crying about the relationships they had failed to have with their children.   Meg Ryan looks like Melanie Griffith.  They must have had work by the same surgeon.  Meg Ryan wouldn’t remember me either.

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Rant Whitstable

Red Spider Cafe

Before I start my regular blog I want to write about Whitstable and The Red Spider Cafe.

The Red Spider Cafe was a charming shack on Whitstable beach that, throughout my childhood, served tea and cake.  It closed some time in the late 70’s and stood derelict for many years.  The Red Spider was finally demolished in the 1980’s during the massive beach renovation and sea-defence construction.

I have always dreamt of the Red Spider being rebuilt.

There’s something non-Whitstable people need to know about Whitstable Beach: it is an anomaly.   Unlike most beaches in the UK which are owned by the Crown Whitstable Beach is owned privately by my friend Barry Green’s company.

There’s something else non-Whitstable people need to understand.  If Barry had not bought the Whitstable Oyster Company and preserved it and the surrounding buildings the Oyster Stores would have been demolished.  They were slated for demolition.  Barry saved the building and by doing so saved the town.

Barry is not a philanthopist..he is a businessman.  The Red Spider cafe will make a profit.  It must be rebuilt because Whitstable needs to continue evolving and growing.  People need jobs.  Especially now.

Barry’s eldest son Richard and I instigated the restaurant at the Oyster Company (Royal Native Oyster Stores) that almost single-handedly regenerated Whitstable’s fortunes.

Nobody local took the restaurant very seriously when it first opened.   I cooked,  Richard served.  Within a month it was packed.  Every day.

During those early years I begged Barry to rebuild the Red Spider and now, twenty years after it was torn down, the Red Spider may indeed be rebuilt.  However, Whitstable and the people who now live there, has changed.  Middle class, ‘keep it as it is‘, ‘terrified of change‘ type people now vocally oppose the rebuilding of what was once a great, water-side resource.

 

Red Spider in the snow

They are frightened of alcohol being served at the Red Spider even though just a hundred feet away stands the Neptune Pub which is a very messy, unkempt affair.

They are scared of the suggested long opening hours even though the building is further away from homes than the nearest, noisy pub.

They say that the rebuilding of the Red Spider will have an ‘environmental impact’ which is just bull shit and proves how far these detractors will go to stop the Red Spider cafe from being rebuilt.

The Red Spider Cafe 1950's

Obviously I am totally in favour of the rebuilding of the Red Spider Cafe as I am also, unfashionably, in favour of Barry rebuilding the beach huts along the beach.  As one can see from the photograph above there were huts all over the beach when I was a child and they enhanced the charm of the town and more importantly the beach.

The sort of people who complain about The Red Spider are the sort of people who frankly don’t understand Whitstable and more importantly resent the difficult, unruly Greens and their stunning success.

Did you notice that the crude painting of the ‘red spider’ looks more like a tick?

REBUILD THE RED SPIDER

Oh yes, and before all you new Whitstable people wonder what business it is of mine…I am presently buying a property in Whitstable after only 4 years of absence.

Yesterday ended up being more fun than I anticipated.  Occasionally things happen that inadvertently make sense of uncomfortable feelings.    What started out as a day where I couldn’t even raise my head ended at an AA meeting where my perspective changed, my positivity regained.

What seemed important in the morning was less so in the evening.

This is the AA reality.  It is almost impossible to burn ones bridges.  The door is always open.  It is a club where anyone is welcome…forever.  The friendly faces may change but they remain friendly and welcoming.  It really is the best club in the world for a person like me.

So, as I said, yesterday began with a feeling of uselessness.  Even though I have more going on than I have all year (the film) I still felt like a husk, a useless, unevolved husk.   I had a beard trimming accident in the morning so lost my beard.

The little Dog and I went for a long walk to the new Rambla Pacifico road which has come once again grinding to a halt.

[wpvideo 0Zjzb0eU]

I sat at my desk and ticked more things off of my moving list.  Roger stopped by and ate pfeffernusse which are spiced german cookies.  The choreographer visited later.   He was a great deal of fun persuaded me to buy an album by Concha Buika (beautiful) and by so doing goaded me out of my bad mood and my house and into the aforementioned AA meeting.

Before AA I decided to go to the last few days of the RRL sale at the Malibu Lumber Yard.  I bought a shirt, waistcoat, vest and a pair of gray woolen trousers.  Ended up wearing this very fetching outfit sans beard at dinner with the choreographer.  We ate at Sauce in Venice.  We ate a huge plate of excellently prepared green vegetables.

Looking in the mirror this morning I do indeed look very puffy and unattractive but hey, that’s the way things are and at my age things are only going to get a whole heap worse so I may as well get used to it.

I don’t feel ugly on the inside.  In fact, I feel very good indeed.

Categories
art

Billy Childish

Billy Childish 2/1/2011

I spent the morning writing lists.

Decided NOT to go to Florence as I couldn’t make the bloody SNCF website take my frigging credit card.  So, I booked into Dean Street Town House and decided to spend some days in London instead.  After all..London is by far a more exciting city than Florence.

By Midday I had made all manner of plans with various friends.  Toby Mott, Tim and others.

Whilst in town have resolved to throw myself into AA meetings, which I have been loathed to do since I arrived.

The day could have ended there but, on a whim, decided to pop in on artist/writer/rocker/father of two Billy Childish who is enjoying something of an art world reprise.

The day would get not only very much better but also very expensive.

I have known Billy since we were at Medway Art College Foundation Course in the late seventies.   Another one of my up and down explosive relationships…but I have always been a great supporter of his and he me.  An unlikely friendship.

When I lived in Whitstable I would spend most Sunday afternoons with Billy and his Mother June.  Delicious roast chicken lunch every Sunday.

For the longest time I thought that he would end up like artist and dandy Sebastian Horsley:  successful once dead. Thankfully that has not come to pass.

Billy’s monumental new work has become monumentally well received.  After a sell out show at the Basel Art Fair and a major New York exhibition in an important gallery planned for the end of the year I can perfectly understand why he seems so confident.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwb6v2tkqRA]

These new paintings are unbelievably beautiful and really hard for the Art Establishment to ignore.   The new work has an impeccable provenance.   Obvious influences include German Expressionists: Erich Heckel, Kirchner, Nolde.

Dreamlike reworking of earlier paintings as well as bold painterly portraits of Billy’s great heroes (Jean Sibelius) and when I was there, an epic series of paintings reworking images from the Battle of Wounded Knee.

Billy has been cruelly left out in the cold for nearly thirty years.  The art world added insult to injury by choosing to patronize the second-rate antics of Tracy Emin over her acknowledged mentor and ‘inspiration’.

I remember introducing Jay Jopling to Billy in Whitstable one Sunday afternoon and was shocked by Jay’s indifference.  Jay told me after the meeting that he thought Billy ‘aggressive and tricky’.

It brings a tear to my eye to see him finally and rightfully accepted into the fold.

Today I filmed him painting in his studio.

People ask him how long it takes to paint a painting.   “What can I say?”   Stabbing at a ten foot high canvas with his charcoal.   “An afternoon or thirty years?”

The new work is huge.

Of course it’s huge!  He is no longer restricted…physically…no longer painting in his bedroom.  He is being acknowledged.  He has a huge studio.  His wings no longer clipped.

These paintings are important.

We talked at length about Tracy Emin his long time ex girlfriend…who, when he saw her the time before last, rudely told him that she could not be bothered to hang out with anyone who ‘hadn’t realized their potential‘.

Tracy!  What a pompous cow!  Liar to boot.

Anyway, since the upturn in his fortunes she is suddenly very friendly with Billy.  He will, by far, crush her with his fame and fortune….even though he has no intention of doing either.

Tracy is a silly girl…she believes in her own greatness whilst all the time using made up stories to fuel interest in it.    Tracy, you mad cow…listen to me…we all realize our potential sooner or later…sometimes quickly…sometimes slowly.

I have a huge collection of Billy’s work.   Beautiful things.

Julie, Scout and Billy 2/1/11

Categories
Travel

New Years Day 2011

New Years Eve ended up being more active than I planned.

After a leisurely dinner at home Carol, Marc and I drove to Herne Bay, the next village east along the Kent coast, and dropped in on my photographer friend Dylan Woolf who’d organized a huge NYE party with dinner and fireworks for a hundred or more local people.

Dylan’s sister Julia and her husband Sim (edited Shrek and Nanny McPhee) are old friends and have the most gorgeous house in LA.  Julia is very funny so I hung out with her almost all of the evening.  Delighted to see an old teacher of mine, Peter Latham (Julia and Dylan’s uncle) and his kids…great to spend time with all of them.

Rather amazingly I bumped into Easterly and Matt Cox who are Kent aristocrats and the cousins of my local nemesis Susanna Atkins.  Not only were they rather incredibly at this party but, as it turns out, have just bought the pile opposite Dylan…the hugest architectural gem of a house, faced with flint, wide floor boards,  elegant architrave, quirky crenellations and gothic mullions.  It is a mesmerizing puzzle of a derelict house with Victorian additions to a Georgian frame.    Huge potential and a million headaches.

Heavily pregnant Easterly is on her way to India for an adventure before the baby is born.

Great to see them..we snuck away and celebrated a quiet 12 o’clock in their vaulted, semi derelict, drawing-room away from the herd.  They handed me a piece of Christmas cake that was so laced with rum I couldn’t eat it…and then quoted one line from my blog that always makes them laugh out loud when ever they say it:  “Yum Fucking Yum!” (Haloooween)

Very Heartening.

It’s very English to live on a building site with two babies and one on the way whilst you are renovating an historic home.  I totally admire their guts but wouldn’t expect anything less.

New Years Day has been, thus far, just as one would expect…eclectic.

My friend Georgina who owns the Copeland House B&B where Nicola stayed last week had staffing issues.  She has been so incredibly kind to me since I arrived ferrying me to the hospital etc. so I gladly got up early to help her out of a tight spot this morning.   I was in the kitchen at 8am peeling smoked salmon onto plates and filling the tea urn.

Georgina told me that her friend Pauline the barrister found the gay references in my blog ‘sickening’.  A little bit of friendly advice Pauline…if you don’t like it..don’t read it…you homophobic cow.  Next time I see you in the high street…walk the other way.

Two faced hag.  You’d think with two faces she’d have learned how to put on make up?

After helping Georgina we headed off to Pamela Leung’s and her husband for a new years breakfast party.  Pamela is an amazing, world-class ceramicist.  I couldn’t help myself from buying a very beautiful sculpture to celebrate the new year and the sale of my Cindy Sherman which made three times what I paid for it.

Pamela’s work: mythic creatures, allegories, thick glazes, exquisitely modeled.  Will take picture before I leave tomorrow.

After our wonderful breakfast (full english) we decided to drive to Margate to see David Chipperfield‘s new Turner Contemporary Gallery on the harbour.  It is DISGUSTING.  It looks at best like a supermarket at worst like a neo-brutalist nuclear power plant.  Admittedly it isn’t finished but the scale, choice of materials are just so at odds with the landscape.

It is neither challenging nor audacious…it is simply a big glass blob that Chipperfield obviously asked his tea boy to design while he was doing something more prestigious.

We drank hot chocolate and ate perfect Victoria Sponge at The Mad Hatters on Love Lane.   If you ever find yourself in Margate on a wet New Years Day…there’s no better way to spend it.

Fell asleep in the car on the way home with little dog on my lap and Alan Bennett on the Radio.

[wpvideo y5ixupcf]

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Health

A Legitimate Family

Still sparkling!  Last day in Whitstable.

Have no plans for tonight and happily so.

My friend Blair drove 30 miles from Wingham to take me to breakfast.  We hadn’t seen each other for 20 years and pretty much picked up from where we left off.  It was really wonderful to see him.  He’s still married to his wife and has three kids.  After breakfast we went shopping for his boy’s 18th birthday.

Blair reads my blog and told me to stop moaning so much.  It was funny and heart warming..he said, “I know that’s not you..”  Which is true..I have not been myself for some considerable time.

Honestly, I think that the Sex Rehab programme/experience really went to my head.

I changed in many ways after I left the show..some good…some bad.  The limited fame and attention, the intoxicating buzz I had every day whilst being filmed…and then the crazed fan who I thought might love me.

With the all clear comes the ALL CLEAR!!

Blair and I wandered up the High Street.  I must have chatted with 20 people of varying ages.  Each of them asked what I was up to and if I was happy…some of them read this..so they knew LOADS.  One of my favorite Dengate boys (rugby player) and his sweet infant stopped me outside Budgens and  warmly greeted me.

I always feel so honoured to have these people in my life.

Something really has shifted.

I got caught up in something peculiarly Hollywood.  I got caught up in the inconsequential periphery of the industry and the unhealthy effects and lost my way.  Now I have to put that all to rest and own up to some glorious mistaken identity.

We watched a bad TV documentary about Michael Jackson last night and the various fixers and characters around him..of course I know the real players in that story and none of them were in the show.  The guys who make the real money, make the real decisions.  It was fascinating to see how the documentary maker had the wool pulled over his eyes..yet, it’s true that the bigger the family you belong to in LA the more likely you are to get on.  SAA, AA..Scientology etc. each a legitimate family for the waifs and strays washed up on the west coast.

My legitimate family is here in Whitstable.  They can and do absorb the greater part of my ego.   I am sitting with Georgina at the B&B trying to repair her tumble drier.  Does that seem absurd?  That this makes me happy?

I missed my nephews birthday party because I was sick with this flu.

New Years Resolution Number One:  Don’t write blog until I have completed a stiff walk up a steep hill.

I bought two new hats:

 

Congratulations to Tanya Sarne and Wendy Dagworthy..my new OBE friends.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Categories
Health

Let’s Start Again Shall we?

Laying in my bed with this fever..seems like a bad time to start cleaning house but that’s what I find myself doing.

As the New Year approaches we all attempt to make changes in our lives, commit or recommit to breaking old habits and focus on what we know is good for us.

Looking back at this eventful year…wasn’t it just?  Of course I think about you-know-who but how I think about him must change.

Already I am wondering why a man I knew for so little time and spent even less real-time became so bloody important to me.

That’s a question I need answering with the help of a therapist.

I can dress it up as a huge romance..or I can tell it as it is…two addicts clinging onto one another for safety.   So few words to describe something that has bugged me all year.

My abandonment issues, separation angsiety…all makes sense.

Jake lingers in my nutty mind because in March I will be carrying the can for the both of us in court.

As irritable as I am about the court date..March 25th (I will be really pissed as the date approaches) I am in the sort of mood where if I were a King I would be pardoning all manner of prisoners.   The prisoner I am pardoning today..is me.  I deleted my Manhunt account, my Adam 4 Adam account and lastly..my Gaydar account.    I must say..it’s a tremendous relief.

All I have to recommit to is my porn problem…which is not as bad as it was but still figures in my fantasy life.

The great thing about AA or SAA or any 12 step programme is that we can always start again.  You know as well as I do how topsy-turvy everything has been these past few months..how thrown off course I have been.

Wandering up the High Street today, a light rain on my face, even though I am really sick..I felt happy.  Incredibly at ease with everything.

I am not in competition with anyone.  Not for a better time, not for a bigger house, not for more money or a better job.  I have quite enough of everything.  I always have.

You know, I am going to tell you something:  I have been praying hard for Jake to be okay.  Praying for his career, his love life, for adventure and peace of mind.

Would I want to be him?  No.  Would I have wanted his life thus far?  No.  Instead of hating him I have been getting some perspective.  Sure, I wasted a great deal of time on that young man, and it feels like not much has been learned..but I am sure that as time passes I will think differently about that.

I can see that not many people anywhere, how ever rich they are..are very happy.  On the face of it Jake had everything a young man could possibly want but just pick at the surface and there’s nothing there.   Happiness is so elusive for so many.  The folks I know here in Whitstable are especially grumpy.   They drink too much, they feel trapped, they are ignorant of so much…yet they live in harmony.

I sometimes wonder if it would have been better for Jake to stay in the closet..if you want to call it that.   They were happy together.  They were soul mates.  He just wanted a bit of cock on occasions…or did he?  For as much as he dismissed what he wanted from me as a ‘bit of fun’, I know for sure that he wants to be loved.

I never really understood what it was about his Father or Mother that made him lie to them.  Were they hideously judgemental?  Homophobic?  Unlikely as his dad is a psychiatrist.  Most probably they are as entitled as he is.  What happened to little Jake?  Precious Jake?

I chatted with someone Jake knew at University last week.  I asked if it was a particularly macho anti-gay university…as Jake had described it.  My friend laughed out loud..he said that it was like going to the Castro in San Francisco.   Ithaca is a private upstate liberal arts college.

He must have lied to me all the time.

He must have been really unhappy.  I hope he gets happier.

Hanging with Tom the other day…he’s happy…his wife and kid seem happy too.  That’s something to aspire to.  I have always wanted the mince-pie, brocade and topiary sort of comfort he has and then I look around and see that I already have it.

As you may have noticed…the blog didn’t go private because there doesn’t seem to be a way on WordPress for me to do that.  Oh well.

BTW, it’s that time of year again where I get to vote for who will win this years BAFTA for best film, director, etc.   I realized, as I was voting for the best male actor, that I knew every one of them personally and had slept with two of them.

Strange but true.

Categories
art Auto Biography Love Rant

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know

I was informed you were dangerous and to only speak to you when chaperoned.

AMANDA ELIASCH

You know who coined the phrase Mad, Bad etc?  Lady Caroline Lamb of course… about Byron!  Although my fun friend the sadly departed Matilda, Duchess of Argyll thought the same of her predecessor, the even more glorious Margaret, Duchess of Argyll whose husband found Polaroids of her sucking a huge cock… naked but for a string of pearls.  Frankly I would rather have been Margaret than Matilda.

Margaret said, “If you have to be a Duchess you may as well be the Duchess of Argyll.” I loved my Duchess adventures in Edinburgh and The Highlands playing back gammon and drinking whiskey, even though she hated paying her gambling debts.

Tell me how brilliant that is?  Amanda warned off me?  Most people are in no uncertain terms.  It certainly separates the chaf from the corn.  (The Chav from the Thorn). The people who remain in my life are up for the adventure of knowing me.   My new friend Ed, for instance, who I am spending tomorrow evening with…  what a sweetheart.  Of course there’s a long list of oafs who cannot bear the heat in the kitchen…  more fool them.

When I left Joe he told the friends who remained my friends they were ‘spineless’.  I am PERFECTLY sure that I would do EXACTLY the same. I am excited by my own life all over again.  What adventure will I have next?

Amanda and Tim are once again breaking up…  but the truth of the matter is that Amanda… poor old bird… can’t bear to be separated from Tim.  I know THAT feeling.  I hate to be separated from the man I love.  I want to punish the fuck out of him… so now she’s upon FB slagging him off like an old fish wife.

I was never so lonely as the moment I left him.

Tim’s being very discreet but really!!  These two star crossed lovers must decide what they want to do!  I can’t be the sacrificial lamb every time they fetch out their AK 47‘s.

Amanda’s beef?  Tim bought her a voucher for a ‘Garden Center‘ turns out that the ‘voucher’ is for her to buy something from the glorious Chelsea Physic Gardens a stone’s throw from her Cheyne Walk home.   Now, I would love that as a gift.  I don’t really care if Tim berates me behind my back.  It’s his prerogative but the simple fact is… I don’t care!   He’s in excellent company.

What’s been going on in FREEZING COLD Whitstable?  Had breakfast at Windy Corner Stores.   Wandered home along the  beach.  In the very short time it took me to get home something of a miracle  happened…I began to inhabit my own skin once again.  Every time I pray for something it is swiftly delivered.  The only problem is… I don’t pray enough… because I’m frightened that the magic won’t work!

Typical Boxing Day… cold meats, TV, pickles, a trip to the pub.

Whitstable, my darling home town grounded me.  Everything is going to be OK.  This is where I have lived and I will die.  The people who know me..know me.   I am so happy here..even though it is not my current home there is always, and will always be room for me.

PS You’ll need more than a chaperone to keep safe around me.

Boxing Day 2010

Categories
Christmas Dogs Love

Merry Christmas From Whitstable

A lot of what artists do seems to involve watching and waiting to see what will happen. When I’m desperate enough just to do anything, even if it seems completely stupid, it’s such a relief.

Bruce Nauman

Seems like an odd quote to start my Christmas blog but without doubt much of this years nonsense would have been resolved sooner if I had thrown myself all the more harder into some sort of work..paid or un paid.

Firstly, I want to thank you all for so loyally following my blog.  I bumped into my friend Josh last night at the Pearson’s and he told me how much he loved reading it.  Such a surprise!

Christmas in Whitstable has been a great deal of fun.  The pubs packed with revelling youths.  All the chavs are dressed in padded country jackets.  Caps and Barbour type padded jackets.  They look great.  Consequently I can no longer wear mine.

Met my mother for lunch.  I gave her a lovely etching by Wendy Croft that I found in the Caxton Gallery that my friend Tom’s cousin owns and where I am negotiating to live next summer.

Alma and I are off to Church this morning to sing Hymns.

St Alphage is a blunt, crenellated,  Anglican church on Whitstable High Street where, as a child, I sang in the choir.

I took Alma for communion and we sang hymns very heartily.  There was one very good choir boy..too good.  Amongst the ancient old ladies this tall, mop headed youth..like David Beckham playing on a local 5 a side team.

After the service we hung out in the vestry with the choristers, some of whom were in the choir when I was a little boy.   I showed Alma the picture of me back then dressed in my cassock and surplus.  I will see if I can scan it for you.

Alma teared up during the ‘peace be with you’ segment of the Anglican Christmas Service.  We all shook hands and hugged.  Everybody seemed very genuine.

I had a blog comment about my continuing, yet more occasional (indeed diminishing), mentions of Jake.  I now only mention him when I want to share how obsession/addiction/compulsion ruins my life.    I don’t really care what he, or if he knows about it.   As for how long we were together..that really doesn’t matter.  If your heart has been revealed and riven…well, I’m just telling you…it takes time.

I could write about the big dog being killed every single day.  The two incidents are sort of similar: the death of something special.  I think about both of them every single day.  I don’t care if that inflates his ego.  In some way, whenever I am inactive or having a quiet moment I will either remember the moment she was killed or the moment I understood that he would never be my boy friend.

The death of love.

When the Big Dog was killed I couldn’t stop crying.  It might have been the realest thing I ever experienced.  As a result it brought up every painful moment I ever felt but refused to cry over.  The death of my Grand Mother, my real father’s death…oh the list goes on and on.

It is TIME TO FEEL.  I am happy that I am coming out of it but it was essential to experience.

Before I left NYC I met a young man who has been emailing me and with whom I am building a connection.  He is a really special man.  An artist and an intellectual.  I am not keeping any of his emails.  They are immediately burned after reading.

Yes we did fuck the first night we met which is not ideal…and maybe that will impact on our future liaison but I am seeing where this one is heading.  Let’s hope that this next year will be productive, considerate and filled with love.

Christmas Day was okay.  I found a blond wig and clowned around for the kids.  We opened a million presents and May bought The Little Dog a reflective coat for the miserable New York nights ahead of us.

Alma, May, Me, George Christmas 2010

I forgot to mention that I met my brother’s beautiful little son who had his first birthday on the 1st December.  His name is Oscar and had a ready smile and a charming disposition.  He LOVED the Little Dog.  Perhaps I should leave everything to him when I die?

I have to leave my money to someone…maybe him.  I really liked him.  That’s an odd thought isn’t it?  I have to think about it sooner or later.

Ended up helping with the cooking of Christmas lunch.  The turkey was great..really moist and cooked through.  Cooked for 11 people.  I felt a little distant.  I wonder when I am going to sink back into my own skin?  They asked me why I was so ‘subdued’ I felt that the correct word might be contemplative.

We devoured the St John’s Christmas Pudding with lashings of clotted cream.

After lunch hung out at my friend Sasha’s cottage. Her dog Pip and her friend’s dog played with the little dog who tried fucking them both.  He was very funny.  Saw some very good British TV…however my once friend David Walliams (Clancy’s Kitchen) has a new show that isn’t at all funny.  A mocumentary about airports…terrible.

A few more days in Whitstable.

Need the results of further tests from last Wednesdays hospital visit.

I am going to Florence next week for NYE then I am in NYC apartment hunting.  So, lots to do.

Have a very happy Christmas everyone…unless you are jewish…or a muslim..or don’t give a fuck.

BOXING DAY update.  My friend Rachel Weisz is all over the news today…leaving her husband for Daniel Craig.  I could just tell that was on the cards.  She looked miserable the last time I saw her.

St Alphage Church 2010

 

Alma, May, Me, George Christmas 2010

Sasha
Categories
art Dogs

Bugger That

Hospital day yesterday.  It was quick and efficient.

Nicola arrived from London on Tuesday and bought delicious, French macaroons.

We ate dinner at Wheelers (4 courses 65 GBP including a dozen native oysters) and she stayed in Georgina’s B&B in the same room/bed I stayed this July.

The following morning we bought her Wellington boots from the ancient shoe shop Wooley’s on the High Street and went for a long walk on the snowy beach.  Met other very jovial dog owners and the little dog ran like a mad thing through the melting snow, his little pink paws skidding over the ice.

The woman in Wooley’s, incidentally, remembered fitting my school shoes when I was a boy.   Wooley’s has been on Whitstable High Street for a hundred years next year.  They asked if they could put my photograph in the window when they celebrate their centenary.  I was honoured!

We walked to The Battery, Marilyn’s place on the beach..I described it in my blog the other day.  On the way there, however, we peered through Janet Street-Porter‘s cottage window at her austere modern kitchen and her Gary Hume prints.   I wouldn’t want to live there.  It was so impersonal and the yellow walls were painted the wrong yellow.

The Battery looks a bit worse for wear.  I may nip up there later today and take a picture of it for you so you can see what I am talking about.

If you hadn’t noticed I feel leagues better.

I decided to let myself off the hook.  Become quite tearful when I write it down like that.  It’s time to stop beating myself up.  Give myself a break like they say in the Narcotics Anon literature.

I was chatting with a friend yesterday and I realized that I was finally out of the woods.   It’s a decision.  I have been waiting for a storm to pass rather than wash something down the drain.

My friend was telling me that he would find it hard to love again after his last failed romance, that he had been tossed aside…and I thought to myself, “Bugger that, life is far too short not to fall in love!”  I come from a long line of men who can say proudly that they love another man.  I love you is possibly the hardest thing one man can say to another.  I am doubly proud that I have said it and I meant it.

Saying I love you is much harder than saying I want to fuck you.

All I have to do is find a man who can hear those words and value them.

So, today I tried not to engage with bad thoughts and old resentments.   I thought out loud, come on LOVE you can show this old man that life is worth loving again.  So, I’ve been feisty all day but not angry.  I have been creative all day and not asleep.

I pulled out a couple of scripts.  I made a couple of calls.  I thought about finding a producer.  I had a meeting with a woman I might do a property deal with.

It was good day.  It is good to be home.

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