“Which of the daughters
Of Phorkyas are you?
Since I liken you
To that family.

Are you perhaps one of the Graeae,
A single eye and a single tooth,
Owned alternately between you,
One born of greyness?”

Goethe, ‘Faust part II’
Translated by A. S. Kline

“Mr. James Hennessy offered a resolution that the entire body proceed forthwith to Newark and get drunk… Then the Democrats charged upon the street cars, and being wafted into Newark proceeded, to use their own metaphor, to ‘paint the town red’.”
New York Times 1883

“…because they would be paid up in Chicago for their half-year’s work, and would then do their best towards painting that town in purest vermilion.”
Rudyard Kipling, ‘A Little More Beef’ 1889

“And there he was at the end of his tether after having often painted the town tolerably pink without a beggarly stiver.”
James Joyce, ‘Ulysses’ 1920

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres…”
Matthew 23:27 (King James version) 1611

“Deep in the shady sadness of a vale,
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star,
Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair.”

Opening lines to John Keats,’Hyperion’ Book 1 (1820)

“Now it must be asked if we can comprehend why comets signify the death of magnates and coming wars, for writers of philosophy say so. The reason is not apparent, since vapour no more rises in a land where a pauper lives than where a rich man resides, whether he be king or someone else. Furthermore, it is evident that a comet has a natural cause not dependent on anything else; so it seems that it has no relation to someone’s death or to war. For if it be said that it does relate to war or someone’s death, either it does so as a cause or effect or sign.”

‘De Cometis’ Albertus Magnus (1200-1280ad)

A long, long time ago I played in a band with a guitarist called Frank. His timing was sometimes a bit off and frequently what was supposed to be a twelve-bar came out anywhere between eleven and a half and fourteen (actually this is quite common among blues players), but despite these quirks he had a very convincing way of playing. He’d lived in the Projects in Chicago at the end of the sixties, married the daughter of one of the big players and even spent some time in an American sanatorium. This gave him blues credibility and, despite a tendency towards jumpiness if he forgot his pills, he was considered by many to be the ‘real deal’. He taught me a lot.

One of our more salubrious gigs was in a place called ‘Hustlers’ in Worthing. A bar above one of the pubs on the sea front, there wasn’t a stage as such, just an end of a largish room. The carpet had seen better days. Once it must have been a deep, swirling red, but years of cigarette ash, spilled drinks and the trampling of wet shoes in from the coast-road outside had given it a grey, slightly leathery sheen, through which the pattern nevertheless still fought for attention. It might have looked better if it had shown signs of a recent vacuuming, but with clubs, once the lights are turned down it’d be too dark to notice, and the barman looked like he was used to relying on this fact.

Punters started drifting in while we were still setting up the gear and by the time we began playing we had a smallish audience of about forty people, consisting largely of what looked like TV repair men accompanied, not so much by rock-chicks, as fully fledged chickens.

Frank’s signature move consisted of a kind of whallop-like power-chord, not dissimilar to Pete Townsend’s windmill guitar, but more of a one off strum, this often accompanying a vocal declamation such as “Ah got the Bluuuuues” his cheeks and bottom lip blowing out explosively as he pronounced the ‘B’ while his right arm descended on the guitar with a satisfying clang. When this happened you’d know that Frank would now be in the zone and some marvellous improvisation would likely ensue. Only on this occasion, the explosive was accompanied by something shooting across the room past his microphone and Frank immediately turned to me yelling: “Chris, solo!” This didn’t usually happen and I must have been visibly taken aback, because he then leaned over to me and bellowed in my ear, just loud enough for me to hear under the rest of the band: “I’ve, lost, my, teeth” at which point he unslung his guitar and disappeared into the audience.

I have probably played better solos than the one I performed that night, but it was certainly my longest, sorely testing my abilities to create a meaningful dynamic when, each time I approached a possible climax, I had to check the progress of our lost guitarist, diving hither and thither between the legs of people dancing or just standing holding their drinks. Eventually though he reappeared clutching his prized dentures, giving them a quick wipe on his T-shirt before popping them back into his mouth.

I don’t remember much of the rest of the gig. All I could think about was the carpet, and how much of it was now in Frank’s mouth.

“Across the country, violence, vandalism, theft and disorder are an everyday menace, created by faceless gangs of youths with little fear of ever being caught.
Streets, trains, buses and shopping centres have become no-go zones for terrified citizens who have been intimidated by hoodies for too long.”

Daily Express
Mar 30th, 2008

Today I spent some time on the pier watching the sea. We’re in the end of a hurricane and the waves were coming in higher than usual under the weathered boards, sometimes only a few yards away from where the starlings sleep. Occasionally small groups of them took flight towards the marina, perhaps in search of somewhere less perilous to roost, the wind buffeting them as they sped across the grey-green water.

Waves crashed in, some mountainous, some merely huge. I began to notice it was not the tallest ones that made the biggest explosions as they hit Albion Groyne, but those that seemed lower, faster, more angry. Yet despite their speed they never seemed to catch up with the waves in front. It was as if they deliberately distorted time, creating the excuse to race and rage in the hunt for their predecessors; low-hunched wolves with foaming mouths hurling themselves at the shore.