The gallows or the pox

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KILMARNOCK INFIRMARY (1868-1982)

Simon has a chain. I have a bent pipe. Gavin, a stick with a nail in it.

I don't trust Gav, an all round average boy, I expect he is waiting for a spot to open up at cooler tables. Lacking interests of his own he parrots ours - football stickers, Warhammer.

Si is my gran’s neighbour, thoughtful and delicate. He stirs odd feelings in my 12 year old body. I’m frustrated that he isn't a girl, a gun I would later turn on myself.

One summer evening we break into the derelict Old Hospital. Gav's idea.

Blasted windows peek through overgrowth above a child sized hole in the security gate. Boards cover every formal entrance but the building splays open at its side like a mortar wound.

Inside is dark twice over, blackened by a fire the year before. Center stage a charred bed frame catches light from a hole in the ceiling. I picture twisted, thrashing bodies turned to dust while nurses dance to an arsonist’s spell.

We push forward, always within touching distance of each other, our petty schoolyard grievances dissolved like cigarette paper. Push. Forward.

The roof of the central stairwell is open to evening light, but I freeze on the first landing. The floors below and above are gone, incinerated. There is no hospital here, only grand Victorian megaliths, and I'm suspended in mid air between them. Si is just ahead, length of chain trembling.

“Fuckin hell!”

I look up from my vertigo. Gav stands drowned in sunset at the top of the stairs. He’s dropped his stick and is looking out at something I cannot see.

“Fuckin hell.”

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FFFFFFilth #5: Dirty Old Bollocks Inc

Dreadful scene, eh big yin? Sittin half-cut inna taxi wi some other cunt’s hand up yer man’s arse. Yer man’s mouth geein it aw “Acht, at least it’ll make a good story!” Lanark’s a good story but ye won’t catch me jumpin in onny big holes on a friday night mate, mon tae fukk!

Made me hink ae somethin’ yon wee prickly bam in The Filth says. "Aw we kerr aboot's the ink." Course ye do hen, yer aw ink aw the way doon! 

Thur’s a point in there still, but. 

Aw the stuff we’ve talked aboot – how it’s a wurld full of durty bastards’ll who’ll sell yer ain dandruff back tae ye as the cure fur floppy dick syndrome – only makes sense here cos the pricks in The Hand mixed it up just right.   

Thur’s some other comicks by big Grantybawz that use the same mix, mind. Flex Mentallo, aw hardsoft bulges and tender tanlines. Or The Invisibles, where it got tae breathe and change in time.  

The Filth’s no like that tho. It’s aw tall tales that die a death up a shady back passage, mysteries revealed an recanted, excuses piled ten mile high. La Pen did it! The i-life did it! The Germs did it! It was aw in yer heid! 

Then when ye get tae yer whitjimacallit, yer exposition, whit dae the shady cunts holdin The Hand dae? Tell it in broad Scots and get Gilbert and George tae set the scene. Fukksake!

That’s whit’s good about it annaw tho. Like The Ink, The Filth runs thru aw this shite. the way that it feels aw fukt and uncomfortable leaves ye wonderin… whit stories are they rammin up oor holes the now? Whit wans protect Status:Q, and whit wans might help us survive??? 

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A Brief History of British Comics
10: M.A.S.K.

• Publisher: IPC Magazines / Fleetway    
• 25th October 1986 to 22nd October 1988
• 80 issues

Part of the magic and the curse of childhood is that you imbue the most anodyne nonsense with incredible meaning and power. Toys become fulcrums for juvenile passions, likewise the cartoons and comics that tie-in to those toys. In fact, it’s there that fires of obsession can be stoked dangerously, causing scars that last long into adult life.

These capitalism-fuelled, but pure-hearted infatuations can calcify and corrupt, leading to the flinty-eyed, hardline nostalgia of infantilised middle-aged men. As likely to be on a Tommy Robinson march as haranguing people on an ‘Action Force’ Reddit. Appalling behaviour, with one eye on the immaculate toy-shelf, the other on the howling void.

M.A.S.K was always shit. The basic idea of a toy vehicle that could change into another, riffed on the groundbreaking ‘Transformers’ model, but even the basics were cack-handed from the start. Bullshit characters with stupid names, a half-baked backstory, and baffling acronyms. Mobile Armoured Strike Kommand? Get fucked.

Obviously, I was obsessed.

The amount of time I invested in this crass, badly conceived and realised mess brings me no fond recall. Staring at images of the original toys leaves me blank. It looks like squandered time. Future landfill.

The British comic version of the toy line was a surprisingly tenacious thing, lasting an impressive 80 issues. Whilst it began with reprints of the truly cruddy US strips, it soon pivoted into original UK material with a surprising array of talent onboard. Quality journeymen like Ron Smith and Ian Kennedy sat alongside the incomparable Joe Colquhoun and the wild, maverick detail of lost genius David Pugh. Peter Milligan turned in scripts. Pitched at a young audience it was innocuous stuff, but it could have been so much worse.

You can only polish a turd so much though. The hourglass sands still tumble. 

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Dear Santa 

I got beef with the big man. We don’t need to go into details. But maybe you do too. Maybe you start getting narky in November, find yourself free falling in the vegetable aisle when one of those songs hit at the wrong time, maybe the families in the adverts and sitcoms are so unknowable they may as well be transmissions from an alien culture. 

I’ve been doing work. Since my kid was born. I didn’t want to be one of those dads that hated Christmas and I didn’t want to fix on a glass smile and pretend because insincerity stinks to kids. My wife lost her job this year and she wants to turn the payout into something good. She loves Christmas. She uses words like ‘magical’ to describe it. So she’s taking the three of us to Lapland. I may as well use it to do some more work. Maybe you’d like to join in. 

1. Choose a Father Christmas. It may be one you know. Maybe just the idea that makes most sense to you. Go back to the saints, go back to the primal idea. Write to the Hogfather if that’s your way in. 

2. Write a letter. You do not subscribe to their judgements of ‘bad’ and ‘good’ but you are a living being worthy of being heard. Worthy of grace. 

3. Ask them for the peace that is the absence of pain as your gift. If you’re further along in the work maybe ask for joy. Don’t move too far beyond what you can accept.  

4. Stamp your letter using the sigil pictured. On the 10th December send by one of the traditional mediums. Fire, air, water or earth. 

5. On the 24th December leave an offering of food. It can be something they reportedly like. It can be something you like. 

6. On the 25th December accept your gift. 

7. Repeat in future years as desired. As needed. 

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Sandwich Punk

"It all just got out of hand in the most incredible way that's going to change the world". explains Cremensa Charles, louche on the leatherette of Ice Nightclub in Thetford, Mecca of the Sandwich Punk scene.

"The Work Punk scene was too constrained. It was exciting for five minutes but the need for self expression was barely there".  

The story goes that Cremensa and fellow Sandwich Punk pioneer, Jeremoth Funds bonded over bread during a break at Seminal Work Punk night, Wednesday at Velvet Panache in Peterborough and set up their own night, Earl. 

"We were talking at this kitchenette in Wednesday whilst eating sandwiches and both realised how transposable the sandwich aesthetic is so we started Earl right here in Thetford." It's a fair point.  Betwixt those slices of bread, literally anything can happen. This is reflected in the music of Sandwich Punk.  Resident DJ Sondra Poppenroque (ex member of Polyphonic Spree who got forgotten and stranded in Norwich during their 2003 UK tour) chooses a "bread" tune for each set, played between the more exciting "filling" tunes.  

"Tonight the bread is a tune called Diamond Lights by this 80s duo, Glenn and Chris." Says Sondra.

"It's such a nothing tune that you really feel it when the filling drop is Danny Brown or Stockhausen or B*Witched or something like that".

The crowd clearly agree as Glenn and Chris fades into Lightning Bolt, the sound of over a hundred lunch boxes close and the crumbs fly from cheese and pickle epaulettes and tuna mayo elbow patches. 

Work Punk is dead and a new punk is filling the gap.  Take a bite.

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The Lion in Winter (Anthony Harvey, 1968)

The tower of Henry II's castle fortress at Chinon is an iron nail in the earth, driven from heaven. Its impact craters outward in time, eventually to outrace and immolate Joan of Arc's visions and the Templar grand wizard, while the centre secured a seat of trade and crown for centuries.

Henry's having a bad Christmas and right now the castle’s historic density is pressure-cooking his family gathering - including estranged wife Eleanor of Aquitane, plus his sons, mistress, and the prince of France - like a basted goose.

When you are king the whole world is called into existence by god, through your proclamation. Indecision is calamity because without the king’s word, everything vanishes. With that much at stake, how can a troubled mind speak? Meanwhile, in the heart of the crisis, everybody wants to know who gets your money when you die. Soon now.

Hepburn and O'Toole are ferocious in this, already legendary and seething with chemistry. The rigours of state weigh on their frames and pull them into contortions of resentment, straining at their golden chains with all the tools allowed to their exalted roles: strategy, betrayal and cold castle walls. Royal houses gather to suffer with none of the comforts of family, vessels for poisonous reserves of heritage, festive gifts bequeathed by inhuman traditions from the stones.   

She wants the loot for the Lionheart, but he favours John. Cornered, Henry passes his will silently, with a sword on a shoulder. The world endures, she wins the game and the Angevin Empire is set on its fateful course. But all of their passion means nothing.

The ripples chase down Richard less than ten years later and he dies slow from the arrow of a vengeful child: Henry wins from the grave when John the Lack-land takes the throne. King John's destiny, losing the monarch's unquestioned grip above and below to rebellions of scheming barons and merry outlaws, fulfils his father’s unspoken wish to hold his word, let the world end, and be done with this pitiful charade.