Big trouble on the beach

Now i'm for it. Seems Alexander and Sammy left their bucket and spade on the beach yesterday. Tourism chiefs are looking for the culprits; folding their arms and putting their hands in their pockets.

Wish you were here ...

Someone once wrote, "Things may come and things may go but the art school dance goes on for ever." (I think it was Pete Brown, bless.)
Any way, we don't have enough art school dances in Cullercoats. Hardly any, in fact. Nothing much to frighten the horses.
And i suspect that Winslow Homer wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs in the Queens Head pub on a Bank Holiday weekend.
"I'm just praying for rain and gloom, Julian."
"Is that a pint or a half, Winslow?"
But never mind. The place does have its moments and here's one of them.
Having just paid £20 for a 2cm Lego figure of Two Face (he's in Batman, i'm told) who should i find on the beach but ... well ... One Face?
(That's his pal peeking out from behind, so it could be Two Face.)
One day I was in the backwoods of some northern Californian town, miles from anywhere and idling away some moments. I picked up a book, opened it and there was a painting of Cullercoats bay by Winslow Homer (DOH!) .
"Well, that's synchronicity," i said.
And here's some more. Arthur Koestler and G Sumner would be proud.
Lego people now seem to be filling up my life (and emptying my pocket).
So now i wonder if one day, i'll open a book in Grass Valley CA and find this rather more cheerful vision of Cullercoats.

Drawing in the kitchen

Sunday morning; drawing pictures of Two Face -and Poison Ivy and Joker and Penguin and ...

Caption competition

OK, put pen to paper and come up with a fab caption for this photo taken in the the back lanes of Barcelona.

Cheerful bloke in Barcelona market

See, Emily plays - the Fender Telecaster

Why does the Fender Telecaster give me so much pleasure? I mean, I know there are better guitars. (*)
There are those who claim that it's just a posh banjo. (Actually there aren't, I made that up.)
OK, but like the banjo, the Tele plunks and plonks a lot: it's to do with the single coil pick ups. I'm told.
And like the banjo, its aficionados all wear beards, plaid shirts and sandals.
No, i made that up as well.
Sid Smith once said to me that it didn't matter what i plugged my Tele into, it still sounded like my Tele. Always polite, Sid didn't mention that it also sounded like everybody else's Tele. Only not so good.

I guess that's true ... plunk plonk, clonk.
One of the lovely thing things about a Fender Telecaster is that it's dead simple. Just stop and go, really.
Stratocasters have wiberly woberly controls - five positions to choose from. And then some knobs and a whammy bar thing. What's that about?
And Gibson Les Pauls, well, look what happened to Paul Kossoff. He's dead. And I'm not prepared to change my name, anyway.
My bank manager (yep) was telling me the other day that her pal bought a £4,000 Les Paul called the Jimmy Page.
Which is weird because, as legend goes, Jimmy played a Fender Tele on Led Zep's famous first LP. (It's kak, btw.) And Jimmy isn't called Paul. Or Les.
So, of all the famous Tele players, who's my fave?
Well, the chap from Booker T and the MGs who did all those minute masterpieces for Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, et al is really good. He played In the Midnight Hour one way ... and then backwards for Dock of the Bay. And he's not dead.
But no, not him.
Oh there's an endless list. Keith Richard? Oh crumbs, no, he's a rare beast. A dull Tele player.
No, my top of the pops has to be Syd Barrett. Oh bliss.
All those lovely noises, rattles and trips.
The lovely Syd is another example of that, when it comes to the Fender Telecaster, the less you do, the better it gets.
And, as Sid Smith said to me, no matter what you do, it still sounds like a Tele.

(*)This article first appeared in my head. Only it was better.

Why do we get up?

It's tough being a human. You get born, you die; it rains on your holiday, cats puke and the plants need watering.

So, after a couple of million years, you'd think we'd have given up and just bought a caravan, or something.

But no, we keep on keeping on, rubbing the sticks together and having haircuts.

Surprisingly, while there have been umpteen attempts to lend sweetness and explanation to the experience of existence - God, mammon, the Fender Telecaster, for example - there have been surprisingly few attempts to explain our basic human behaviour, which we might typify with the question, Why do we get up? (*)

In truth, for many years I tended toward the simple get-out answer, Because we can't find the off switch.

But of late i've puzzled further, consulted widely and stood in the queue at Marks and Spencer. And as a result i am now prepared to make an attempt to move the debate forward.

I am indeed prepared to submit that there are, in fact, three unique human dispositions UHDs.

These powerful forces may be likened to the fundamental forces of physics which acting together, shape our universe. They are of course, gravity, the strong nuclear force, electromagnetism and err... the hunt for spangles.

Anyway, there are three, much clearer forces at work which underpin all human behaviour:-

• Self-pity ... known as the dark force and which may yet prove to be the unifying force long-sort by philosophers and Sunday magazine editors.
• Self-delusion ... unique in the whole universe to the human experience, it has, for example, the capacity to generate a billion twitters and blogs every day. So strong indeed it is thought that self-delusion created IKEA within the first few seconds of the human condition.
• Bad taste ... considered for many years to be a simple by-product of existence, but bad taste is now understood to be one of three pillars of all human motivation and experience. Without it (and it's twin, self-delusion) we would have long ago run out of excuses for all those tile shops, the continued production of German pop music ... and tinned spaghetti hoops.

Now i recognise there may be some among us who would prefer the more comfortable, traditional answers to the Why do we get out of bed? question ...

• we need a new mattress
• my partner farts
• the cat puked

... honestly, i know, i've tried out those answers. But believe me, in the end they are unsatisfactory, hollow ... self-delusional.

Be brave. Open your mind. NO ! More than that, open your Yellow Pages and see the truth for yourself. Really, only my new three UHDs can explain all those kitchen show rooms, tile shops and the continued success of IKEA.

Oh crumbs (self pity) back to my banjo practice (bad taste, self delusion). Be of good cheer.

(*) OK. All those aged 12 -19years are excluded. They are aliens, never get out of bed and therefore lie outside the scope of all human explanation.