The Ghost part 5
I am out of the tunnel. Into the bright. I can see the distant lights. I no longer peer from the reverse end of binoculars at the world. To touch the sun and not get burnt is the quest. It is our only rational god. It appeases our daydreams as it shines on our barnets. The anti-D's are registering I think and also the persistant nice weather helps: I can hear the merry singing of a song Thrush.
Baby it's alright.
It's alright.
Sarah Blasko.
I'm dipped in the murky and shady underworld of espionage during WW2. We were desperate not to lose all to Nazi Germany. We played games in Washington just to persuade FdR, etc to save our broken corpse and in the long run also save the USAs bacon whilst at the same time the Germans and Russians were both striving to keep the Americans as isolationists. It exposes the many layers that Britain has that're fundamental to it's body politk. The many faceless gentlemen club members who schooled at Eton, worked through theology or classics at Oxbridge came out with a 'degree' entered public life in some secure regulating career and perhaps end up as senior civil servants with landed gentrification, honours and ties for favours. While maintaining the same status quo. This band who suffer the best of life off those without this premium life start must have vested interests putting us where we belong? Ra it's so unfair to be ruled by those born to boon. I am between the pointless scum and the high appointees in the scrum: squeezed like a mishandled ball too and fro.
I think that maybe all profoundly idelogical dictators have the right to take power, however they see fit, and do as they see fit to all that might stand in their ways as they feel they need to turn over the earth and reap anew? But while king dollar requires his oil and trophies(sports teams) anyone trying to Chavezise or Fidel their country is a pariah.
I realize socialism isn't enough a label for me so I say 'down with any property, all want - to stamp out wanton greed and wanton poverty, all ownership must be distrusted, all banks must be held to account for their policies of enrichment. We must all strive for a common unified goal: much like the heroism and self sacrifice of the British from Dunkirk until the bunker. All people must feel included too in this human adventure from womb to grave.
John Martyn - Inside.
Led zeppelin - bron-yr-aur.
I stir to get a Horlicks for a semblance of sleep prior to golden ball's slumbers. The feather thin partitions that divide up the flat weren't designed for co-habiting. This isn't right is it and even if I got a job at Revolution I would have this ceaseless frenzy of copulation every other day always within my hearing. From the next door down comes the intoxicating odour of hash and, with Loverman in the next room, this could be a scene from a Paris alley filled with 'leprous houses' within 'streets that follow like a tedious arguement of insidious intent'. All we need is a stiflingly humid and wretched summer and a few languid celling fans moving stale air and swishing to the sound of choppers passing over head, circa 1968 Paris. I can feel a wave of hayfever coming on as my nasal passage blocks at around 1am.
It takes me back to 1999 when I arrived in Kulua Lumpur mid journey to Perth with a rough 13 hours to kill between arrival and departure. The state-of-the-art airport with its vast air-conditioned monorail terminals and customs exits. I decided I may venture to the city for this 13 hours and perhaps sleep somewhere? There were many bland, but very comfortable looking monoblock hotels on passing from border control.
I had to promise not to remain in Malaysia for more than 28 days and not work while I was in the country of countless swarming millions. My passport had an entry visa bright purple and in the form of a triangle. I actually wanted to see the Petronas Towers in their majestic glory before I arrived dazed and confused in Perth some 30hrs later.
As usual in Asia I stepped from the blissful cool interior of the airport into the wall of dense impenetrable constricting heat of the tropics: an Englishman could never come close to understanding this enormous contrast from jolly Albion. Pink gin I feel Raffles provide to calm ones fever.
During the wait, around 9am local time, my present attire was my marshaling shame: I was in a light weight but very woolen pair of trousers that while absolutely comfortable on the plane from Manchester, were still basically sheep hair and the trickle of sweat on my spine was spreading towards every other possible pore.
I sensed before I got on board the coach toward the destination that my first error on the journey had been met and found naively wanting.
The airport, with it's clean monolithic and prosperous air, is absolutely not in Kuala Lumpur. It is a veritable lie. I believe the coach took a swift hour and a half to wind it's way from palm jungle and irrigation ditches towards suburbs and more and more dense cityscape to finally ditch me in the centre of insanely busy Chinatown district with it's million steaming smells rank and sweet, luscious and repugnant, tempting and foreboding, like a dope fiends worst nightmare something that couldn't be escaped while mosquitos sucked any remaining will straight out of your bloodstream and you smoked heavy from an opium pipe to numb the reality.
It was clear I was now shattered from my travel and needed to rest in the wilting humidity and find somewhere cheap but civilized in the interlockingly tight streets and passage ways: i was overwhlemed by the smell of diesel and fresh tarmac on one maintained lane. My options were helped by a fellow traveller, with Lonely Planet, I had come across on the coach journey who was able to take me or actually deliver me to one of the backpackers in the quarter. I arrived in a lobby with an old wizened Oriental lady at the counter who very briefly laid out the tariff and handed me a neat pile of Terry toweling sheets for my private room with air-con.
I remember, as there were no locks on my door and, due our location in Chinatown, I was very paranoid to leave any of my belongings unguarded incase they vanished into this cramped city. I rested tightly holding onto my overnight bag in that hazy jet lagged sleepy place and snoozed a couple of hours to hopefully get my head together. All the time just on the edge of true sleep with my Remington travel alarm within easy reach incase I over slept. The chattering of the air-con was strangely mesmerizing.
Once I ventured to the toilet to discover it was a concrete and breeze-block affair with a fly screen over the cobweb strewn smoky broken window. The concrete had 2 stages of contruction that definately changed in texture, there was guttering running down the edge towards a plughole: they must've cleansed the lavatory with disinfectant and a hose as there was a faint bleach smell? There were probably many guests staying and using the facilities but due to the time of day they were probably sight seeing.
Maybe the fear I held for this hostel would stem from my naive 27 years of age and not any tangible threat. The basic setup is to be discovered wherever tourism is done on the cheap.
After a broken edgy snooze I surfaced, washed my self prefunctorily and set out with overnight bag I carried to see Kuala Lumpur. Stepping from the cool, but ragged room I was thrust back into the overwhelimingly tropical heat. I decided instantly I had to find a clothes shop and ditch my conventional Western look. Woolen slacks indeed! I wandered passways and backstreets to eventually arrive upon some more propersous retail areas and finally located the outlet they called the East India Company which reminded me then of the colonial past and the stretch of trade that lasted in the memories of the indigenous folk and our link to this baking land. With a new purchase of kharki shorts and tee-shirt(X2 of each for £16 ONLY) which lasted me for the entire journey to Sydney before being so sea rotted and faded that I disgarded them in Melbourne to bring my allowance down in January 2000.
I went to see the colonial past to approached the colonial Indo-Saracenic Revival architecture town hall and other civil service buildings, but I was always fighting against weariness and the never abating heat and precious time by this point. I could see the Petronas Towers from most points in the city, but I never got close to it, like some mighty mirage. It eventually dawned on me I needed a cool cool lager to revitalise me, Ice Cold in Kuala Lumpur? But this being a strictly Muslim country finding a watering hole wasn't easy, especially without a guide book, and so I drifted up to a Western looking hotel just at the edge of China Town, which was close to our pick up point, to eat and shelter from the heat. It turned out a lot of the people on the same disrupted flight were to Perth were also in this Hotel so we passed our time until we made that long and tedious trip back to the Airport and we all seemed to have the same oppressive insight into the city in our exhausted states.
I have strangely passionate and vivid remembrance of this stop off as it was all part of my coming of age and my braving conventions that had lead my life from cradle to 27.
Another time's coming of age was my first sexual awaking - the discovery of my Dad's stash of European porn circa 1975, and a solitary white vibtrator, all neatly hidden in a brown suitcase at the back of the wardrobe. I recall it being a sensation on the street when discussed by boys who were aged 9 or 10. They wanted to see this thing I had found, like some mystical treasure, and a half dozen very anonymous boys(I only recall one boy in the fog of my memory) ended up comparing erections flicking through RODOX without quite understanding what all this meant. I guess children are too inquisitive for there own good sometimes, but there was no malice and no fear in that strange party. There must be millions of quite innocent discoveries of porn stash hidden away in some mysterious case, box or tucked away in a handkerchief draw and some startling discoveries about the male body. Something men rarely discuss until it's begun it's downwards journey and as plantive banter. I dispute that porn is for dirty men, but for self discovery of the male body as never discussed by society and a way to elevate the stress and strain of the female body.
All my memories are arranged in a gridpattern like the pathetic monstrous soldies graves in a regimented Ypres cemetery and I can glimpse them from my own headstone.
I have a round head, but I don't want to marry a girl with a head like Frank Sidebottom.
Totalitarian nationalism or democratic nationalism: which is more threatening?
Baby it's alright.
It's alright.
Sarah Blasko.
I'm dipped in the murky and shady underworld of espionage during WW2. We were desperate not to lose all to Nazi Germany. We played games in Washington just to persuade FdR, etc to save our broken corpse and in the long run also save the USAs bacon whilst at the same time the Germans and Russians were both striving to keep the Americans as isolationists. It exposes the many layers that Britain has that're fundamental to it's body politk. The many faceless gentlemen club members who schooled at Eton, worked through theology or classics at Oxbridge came out with a 'degree' entered public life in some secure regulating career and perhaps end up as senior civil servants with landed gentrification, honours and ties for favours. While maintaining the same status quo. This band who suffer the best of life off those without this premium life start must have vested interests putting us where we belong? Ra it's so unfair to be ruled by those born to boon. I am between the pointless scum and the high appointees in the scrum: squeezed like a mishandled ball too and fro.
I think that maybe all profoundly idelogical dictators have the right to take power, however they see fit, and do as they see fit to all that might stand in their ways as they feel they need to turn over the earth and reap anew? But while king dollar requires his oil and trophies(sports teams) anyone trying to Chavezise or Fidel their country is a pariah.
I realize socialism isn't enough a label for me so I say 'down with any property, all want - to stamp out wanton greed and wanton poverty, all ownership must be distrusted, all banks must be held to account for their policies of enrichment. We must all strive for a common unified goal: much like the heroism and self sacrifice of the British from Dunkirk until the bunker. All people must feel included too in this human adventure from womb to grave.
John Martyn - Inside.
Led zeppelin - bron-yr-aur.
I stir to get a Horlicks for a semblance of sleep prior to golden ball's slumbers. The feather thin partitions that divide up the flat weren't designed for co-habiting. This isn't right is it and even if I got a job at Revolution I would have this ceaseless frenzy of copulation every other day always within my hearing. From the next door down comes the intoxicating odour of hash and, with Loverman in the next room, this could be a scene from a Paris alley filled with 'leprous houses' within 'streets that follow like a tedious arguement of insidious intent'. All we need is a stiflingly humid and wretched summer and a few languid celling fans moving stale air and swishing to the sound of choppers passing over head, circa 1968 Paris. I can feel a wave of hayfever coming on as my nasal passage blocks at around 1am.
It takes me back to 1999 when I arrived in Kulua Lumpur mid journey to Perth with a rough 13 hours to kill between arrival and departure. The state-of-the-art airport with its vast air-conditioned monorail terminals and customs exits. I decided I may venture to the city for this 13 hours and perhaps sleep somewhere? There were many bland, but very comfortable looking monoblock hotels on passing from border control.
I had to promise not to remain in Malaysia for more than 28 days and not work while I was in the country of countless swarming millions. My passport had an entry visa bright purple and in the form of a triangle. I actually wanted to see the Petronas Towers in their majestic glory before I arrived dazed and confused in Perth some 30hrs later.
As usual in Asia I stepped from the blissful cool interior of the airport into the wall of dense impenetrable constricting heat of the tropics: an Englishman could never come close to understanding this enormous contrast from jolly Albion. Pink gin I feel Raffles provide to calm ones fever.
During the wait, around 9am local time, my present attire was my marshaling shame: I was in a light weight but very woolen pair of trousers that while absolutely comfortable on the plane from Manchester, were still basically sheep hair and the trickle of sweat on my spine was spreading towards every other possible pore.
I sensed before I got on board the coach toward the destination that my first error on the journey had been met and found naively wanting.
The airport, with it's clean monolithic and prosperous air, is absolutely not in Kuala Lumpur. It is a veritable lie. I believe the coach took a swift hour and a half to wind it's way from palm jungle and irrigation ditches towards suburbs and more and more dense cityscape to finally ditch me in the centre of insanely busy Chinatown district with it's million steaming smells rank and sweet, luscious and repugnant, tempting and foreboding, like a dope fiends worst nightmare something that couldn't be escaped while mosquitos sucked any remaining will straight out of your bloodstream and you smoked heavy from an opium pipe to numb the reality.
It was clear I was now shattered from my travel and needed to rest in the wilting humidity and find somewhere cheap but civilized in the interlockingly tight streets and passage ways: i was overwhlemed by the smell of diesel and fresh tarmac on one maintained lane. My options were helped by a fellow traveller, with Lonely Planet, I had come across on the coach journey who was able to take me or actually deliver me to one of the backpackers in the quarter. I arrived in a lobby with an old wizened Oriental lady at the counter who very briefly laid out the tariff and handed me a neat pile of Terry toweling sheets for my private room with air-con.
I remember, as there were no locks on my door and, due our location in Chinatown, I was very paranoid to leave any of my belongings unguarded incase they vanished into this cramped city. I rested tightly holding onto my overnight bag in that hazy jet lagged sleepy place and snoozed a couple of hours to hopefully get my head together. All the time just on the edge of true sleep with my Remington travel alarm within easy reach incase I over slept. The chattering of the air-con was strangely mesmerizing.
Once I ventured to the toilet to discover it was a concrete and breeze-block affair with a fly screen over the cobweb strewn smoky broken window. The concrete had 2 stages of contruction that definately changed in texture, there was guttering running down the edge towards a plughole: they must've cleansed the lavatory with disinfectant and a hose as there was a faint bleach smell? There were probably many guests staying and using the facilities but due to the time of day they were probably sight seeing.
Maybe the fear I held for this hostel would stem from my naive 27 years of age and not any tangible threat. The basic setup is to be discovered wherever tourism is done on the cheap.
After a broken edgy snooze I surfaced, washed my self prefunctorily and set out with overnight bag I carried to see Kuala Lumpur. Stepping from the cool, but ragged room I was thrust back into the overwhelimingly tropical heat. I decided instantly I had to find a clothes shop and ditch my conventional Western look. Woolen slacks indeed! I wandered passways and backstreets to eventually arrive upon some more propersous retail areas and finally located the outlet they called the East India Company which reminded me then of the colonial past and the stretch of trade that lasted in the memories of the indigenous folk and our link to this baking land. With a new purchase of kharki shorts and tee-shirt(X2 of each for £16 ONLY) which lasted me for the entire journey to Sydney before being so sea rotted and faded that I disgarded them in Melbourne to bring my allowance down in January 2000.
I went to see the colonial past to approached the colonial Indo-Saracenic Revival architecture town hall and other civil service buildings, but I was always fighting against weariness and the never abating heat and precious time by this point. I could see the Petronas Towers from most points in the city, but I never got close to it, like some mighty mirage. It eventually dawned on me I needed a cool cool lager to revitalise me, Ice Cold in Kuala Lumpur? But this being a strictly Muslim country finding a watering hole wasn't easy, especially without a guide book, and so I drifted up to a Western looking hotel just at the edge of China Town, which was close to our pick up point, to eat and shelter from the heat. It turned out a lot of the people on the same disrupted flight were to Perth were also in this Hotel so we passed our time until we made that long and tedious trip back to the Airport and we all seemed to have the same oppressive insight into the city in our exhausted states.
I have strangely passionate and vivid remembrance of this stop off as it was all part of my coming of age and my braving conventions that had lead my life from cradle to 27.
Another time's coming of age was my first sexual awaking - the discovery of my Dad's stash of European porn circa 1975, and a solitary white vibtrator, all neatly hidden in a brown suitcase at the back of the wardrobe. I recall it being a sensation on the street when discussed by boys who were aged 9 or 10. They wanted to see this thing I had found, like some mystical treasure, and a half dozen very anonymous boys(I only recall one boy in the fog of my memory) ended up comparing erections flicking through RODOX without quite understanding what all this meant. I guess children are too inquisitive for there own good sometimes, but there was no malice and no fear in that strange party. There must be millions of quite innocent discoveries of porn stash hidden away in some mysterious case, box or tucked away in a handkerchief draw and some startling discoveries about the male body. Something men rarely discuss until it's begun it's downwards journey and as plantive banter. I dispute that porn is for dirty men, but for self discovery of the male body as never discussed by society and a way to elevate the stress and strain of the female body.
All my memories are arranged in a gridpattern like the pathetic monstrous soldies graves in a regimented Ypres cemetery and I can glimpse them from my own headstone.
I have a round head, but I don't want to marry a girl with a head like Frank Sidebottom.
Totalitarian nationalism or democratic nationalism: which is more threatening?
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