Happy New Year followers and welcome to the first post in what will hopefully be a full year of blogging. Inexplicably, despite the month long hiatus which has been spent pretty solidly sitting down doing nothing, I have managed to build on the ever increasing momentum of this pretty triumphant blog and reach the giddy heights of 16 followers. After some fairly rapid mental arithmatic, I have worked out that based on "the Bible" I am, at the time of writing, 7 years younger than Jesus, yet have 4 more disciples, which means that if we get into a league type situation I will have the advantage of being able to choose substitutes. Which is always a nice thought should there ever be a league for blogbased disciple fights... Gimme 2000 years and I may well have my very own church. We can but hope.
Following on from my earlier comment that I have been sitting around doing nothing (and I'm not joking, I've pretty much done fuck all apart from shoot things and eat other things since the last post) I've decided that its hightime for another retrospective trawl through my harddrive to uncover something that might be vaguely interesting for me to write about... Unfortunately this is all I could come up with... If you don't like it, tough, you'll have to wait until the weather's not so shit for me to get out and start doing something a bit more interesting... so brace yourself for another wander into the Dickfingers Archive...
As some of you may know, a few years ago, I spent a good three months taking time out of my busy schedule of bumming about in England to fly to America and bum about over there. My reasons were pretty straight forward: its hotter and the portions are bigger. Add to that I wouldn't have to learn another language and as I wasn't keen on the idea of accidently eating dog I opted against the Orient and went to 'Merkka instead...
While in that fine and proud land, I decided that it was going to be a good idea to get all the things that I had been wanting to do for years out of the way in one fell swoop and skydiving was definitely top of the list. Bearing this in mind, when we rolled through to Vegas, I concluded that there probably wouldn't be a better time to do it. Up we went, out of the plane we jumped and photos were taken to mark the occasion. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to me as I was plummeting groundwards at terminal velocity, the instructor, who I can only assume was bored with jumping out of a plane for the tenth time that day, decided to spice up the picture with what I can only guess to be a joke. Quite how funny it is to pretend to be thumbing in a softie at at 10000ft remains to be seen, however I have to conclude that it is a joke as the alternative is to accept that I narrowly avoided being the first person to be raped in the sky...
Other stuff happened, but I was there for 3 months and some light fingered gobshite stole my camera in LA just before I flew home, most of the pictures I do have are someone elses with me in the background so you'll have to make do with Skyrape for now... Anyway, I came back (obviously) and as I wasn't in any particular rush to start work, I carried on bumming about over here... Toby "Formerly The Brock" Batchelor (who incidently doesnt want to be known as The Brock anymore) was working as TM for iFive Distribution so I ended up spending a few months tagging along, not really doing anything other than listening to "The Squirters" horrendous stories about clawhammers and decapitations while postponing actually getting a job. The following photo was taken at the Park in Great Yarmouth where we went for a demo, and is the first documented example of someone asking for my autograph. Admittedly the kid in question was overweight, had glasses like milk-bottles and as well as having a mullet that could make a German envious, he was rocking a pretty suspect earring and to top it off, smelt like dogshit but everyone has to start somewhere and it still definitely counts and I signed the shit out of him...
The only thing that can follow on from a doughy mulleted child, is Puffy.
Puffy is yet another abomination/decoration that adorns Dickfingers HQ and is on a not-exactly-exclusive list of things that the poor, long suffering Mrs Dickfingers has banished to "the back room." The Back Room, for anyone interested, is the grown up version of blu-takking a picture to the fridge "so that everyone can enjoy it" which is really a glorified way of keeping it out of the way. It is basically home to all of the really horrible things that Mrs Dickfingers doesnt really want to have to carry backwards and forwards every time her Mum & Dad come to visit. As such, it includes the assembled Dickfingers Collection of Fine Art, most things skateboarding related including any occasional houseguests and a stuffed pufferfish. (For the record, Hank the Christmas Owl is in constant threat of being sent to the back room.) Puffy is the product of my brother's trip to Croatia I think, Im sure it was somewhere like that and when faced with the prospect of getting something thoughtful and useful he used his initiative and got me a stuffed dead fish instead. The best bit, after the fact that "its a dead pufferfish" is that the eyes are the googley eyes that you used to get on stuffed toys and if you look in his mouth you can see the cotton wool they stuffed him with. God only knows how you go about taxidermyingying a pufferfish but if I had to guess, (and as we're doing this, I'm going to,) I'd say you'd probably want to get a whisk in there to churn up the innards and separate everything on the inside of the pufferfish from the outside of the pufferfish. Pour the insidey bits out then sling a balloon in it, blow it up until you've got the rough shape youre after and then varnish the fuck out of it as quick as you can before you sling on some googley eyes. If anyone would like to donate their eldery or recently deceased pufferfish, we can test the theory. I'll even make you a cup of tea when you bring it round and you can take photos for the blog... enticing eh?
The next few pictures were from a visit up to Yorkshire to visit Mrs Dickfingers elderly and very northern Grandad. Fortunately, I have the tastes of an old man anyway so was pretty stoked to spend the day pretending I was 80 by gurning out of the top of a open topped bus in between eating pub lunches, drinking beer, having cream teas and complaining about having to walk. It was tops and York wasn't nearly as grim as the media would lead you to believe. I hardly saw a single whippet and it didnt rain once...
Here I am enjoying what I was assured was the very best Cream Teas in the land at Betty's Tea Room in York. This is the starting point of my fascination with Cream Teas and as Tea rooms go its a pretty good place to start really as they've had about 200 years experience in fattening up folk with scones and brews so they know what they're doing. They bring you out shit loads on dainty little silver trays and there are flowers on table and everything, its ever so refined...
The rest of the time in York, (other than the sitting and the eating of Pub Lunches) was spent ambling around Yorkminster, which to the uninitiated is a bloody great big cathedral, slap bang in the middle of York. On the surface it looks fairly normal but upon closer inspection there are some pretty suspect looking decorations in there. I'll start off gently and happily admit that I was actually kind of stoked when I found these sculptures commemorating the brave and noble Muppets that ruled over York in the 17th Century. The did a very good job especially considering they were made of felt and most of them didn't have legs...
However its a shame that the Muppet Bishop Kings were overshadowed by one of the creepiest statues I have ever ever seen. And thats including those weird bastards that paint themselves gold and stand in Covent Garden begging or performing or whatever it is they claim to do... (Honestly, don't get me started on mimes, if I spent my entire working day keeping as still as humanly possible whilst doing nothing, someone would have a nuclear shit-fit instead of handing me money and Lord knows its not as if I havent tried)
Now, I would be lying if I said I knew a lot about the fine and no doubt intricate details of interpreting Statues but I have no idea what was going through the sculptors mind when he decided that the best way to decorate a Church would be with a recumbent Vicar gazing dreamily into the distance while two angels, who happen to be naked children, stand either side... Crying.
...the worst part was that noone else seemed to have noticed it so I spent a few minutes staring at it in disbelief while an entire tour walked past it without breaking stride. Maybe reclining priests surrounded by traumatised infants are more commonplace up north... Mindblowing...
Other random things on my harddrive include my foray into the art world after Mrs Dickfingers parents got me some Art Stuff for Christmas. I'm not sure what they expected me to come up with but I think that they're grateful that I haven't ended up with a sketchbook full of veiny cock and ball combos...
My new found status as an artist also qualifies me to take pictures of trees and horizons at sunset.
Oh and I got a gun. It's this one. It's ever so good and if you're ever in the area I will happily take you out to shoot things with it. Youre welcome...
I'm actually in the process of starting another half assed website that will more than likely include sporadic updates and general nonsense in a slightly different format so if I'm not updating this as often, that will be why... But don't worry, you'll be the first to know as soon as I get off my arse and sort it.
I've got no idea what the next one will be about. If you have any suggestions I'm open to requests, although if you don't come up with anything good I'll have to empty and varnish a pufferfish... You have been warned...
1 comment:
The back room is where I sleep, I often bunk up with a prickly fish
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