A rebel without a clue.

Leeds is such a dirty town And the stench wraps itself With grasping arms  To choke the life out. Such a soreness Pustules and maladies Lingering in doorways Or walking passed lifeless Litter, blowing east Where saviour leans With spice haunted eyes Just the solitary beast: Watching I can't comprehend Where it went wrong? Post-industrial, Post-milltown, Post-worsted, Post-trauma: Please X99 arrive to deliver me From Vagabond folks Emoting something broke. A crack through which I can see What was meant by Conrad 'Exterminate the brutes'. Get me away from this filthy waste! It is up to me. On the plus side I slept peace full Last night.

Central line o o o o that shakespearian rag line. stick with me in this line. shadow of the law line. over the yardarm line. a stitch in time line. a yard of ale line. London town line. a bird in the hand is worth two in bush line Gules, three lions passant guardant in pale or armed and langued azure, line shandy drinking puff line. booze time. England - it's time line. we've run out of bog paper line. solely a political motive line. power corrupts line. divide and conquer line. your finger goes through line. put that in your pipe and smoke it line. pretty vacant sounding like pretty vacunt line. move on time line tuna make me retch line. marmate, love it or hate it line. teatime line. a Pukka pie line. your eyeliner is dark line. 4 and 20 blackbirds line. thin line. thick line. long line. short line. nice line. awful line. a fine line Ontological line. just stop-starting line. we always pretend line. in line. on the line. over the line. line line. head line....

Piles of refuse, dirty pigeons and vagrants... To me this is Leeds: a filthy stain, dried onto the trudged pavement where the monotony of hungry ghosts' do linger; malcontented and always always vacantly staring. In the station a very sign warning of the untruth of homelessness and want. We do it to ourselves. We gouge away. Cigarettes, alcohol and an ascending/descending array of other poisons. Banal and broken. Yet the three cities I've traveled between in the last couple of days, Bristol, Birmingham and Leeds, are exactly the same. They offer scraps and titbits. Distraction: opiates for the masses. And I think it is over entirely for me. Come the autumn I must venture forth once more unless I rot my core where nothing can repair. Life is a movement forward: an energy to be coupled with. ... A week since I returned from Bristol and how it recedes into the dim past. Most walking memories spring up when I'm feeling low: when I struggle with meaning in my life. They are reca...

A Victorian clock ticking, melancholy Upon the wall and slicing seconds, And minutes, hours, days; enough. Ruby, the Vizsla, sleeps through it Without blinking, her head hanging. Arms and legs knotted together Relaxed, she is, beyond any recall. So often today I've called 'come', But the Swift's have won every say! Now claws and paws pad no more. She has such soft posterior regions: Shammy ears, smooth belly, velvety toes And a pleasing silence. ... But then there is a noise below And off she bolts to the bottom fence When I thought she'd gone... In the distance a siren And a ball being kicked Enticing her back I guide her Inside. She's returned to 'their' bed And I gobble water biscuits And Ossau Iraty. Stillness surrounds the dusk. The clock strikes 8 And I'm upstairs climbing asleep To beckon her to cuddle next to me. And she does!

Yesterday I asked the House Keeper if it would be OK for me to do a brief wash of all my clothing, as it was utterly fetid, and she was fine with it. Once I returned from my morning walking through Clifton, Hotwells, Bristol Docks and Wapping I went upstairs and got all my clothes ready to wash and put the large towel I'd been given around my nether regions. Then I went downstairs to speak to her again to let me know when the wash she was doing would be finished so I could come down and wash everything. At this moment her 'partner', a man dressed only in denim knee length shorts, told me I couldn't walk around in just a towel: at first I thought he was being sarcastic, but slightly later, when he came upstairs to use the toilet, he re-enforced this by seeming to threaten me that if I left my room in only a towel he'd 'do something'. With an aging body covered in wrinkled tattoos he spoke daggers and I could clearly tell he was in no way sarcastic. But I didn...

Five hours before a break then two steak and ale pies from two establishments. I'm stuffed and ready for the last leg of Friday. I'm booked in the Notley Arms, Monksilver on a Friday... It's a pub and it's a Friday... I can see light at the end of the tunnel regards this insanity. Why did I bring the full camping ensemble when I haven't slept sunny side up since Cheddar. I've always good intentions, but they often fall into dust. Fantastic. One hundred degrees warmer than the desolation of The Old Cider House. In the Notley Arms I don't have to disappear into the Ancient Mariner or the George before coming back to sleep. It's Friday and the coast isn't too far distant so I chose Fish and Chips. Two Old Rosie Cider to wash it down. Now I'm au naturel supine on the single long bed in room number 7. The patrons didn't mind me eating the food on my lap or walking about barefoot. They said treat it like your home which is why I'm relaxing as n...

Obviously I misunderstood what the host of the B&B meant. He made me a pack lunch to take with me, but it's possibly a fraction of what I expected. If what he left me to consume before a long day ahead... I'll fail to walk many many miles happily - the old saying that an army marches on its stomach is accurate. Some breeze during the night woke me as it shock the sash windows and the toilet door. It took a while to locate where the constant rattling noise was coming from. Then I struggled with the duvet which was too heavy and put too much pressure on my feet. The bed which I took to be a king sized afair is actually two singles so I could only sleep on one side for fear of being woken. In bed I find any impediment at the edges a cause for concern and I always awake whenever my foot touches a footboard or finds the edge or feels suffocated in the bed. The better of the two pubs appears to be the George with its plentiful doggies. The Ancient Mariner was where I ate. They ha...