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June 1, 2005
May 28, 2005
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Sorry, more misery! When I was 13 I was sitting opposite my (non-smoking) coal-mining uncle. He was 43 and off sick with short breath. He used to have to go and lie on the settee after going to their outside toilet.
Once he was talking to me, my auntie was in the kitchen, my cousins, (I expect) were out playing, they were younger than me.
“I-am-alright-Terry” he gasped “it’s-just-”
I waited for him to finish his sentence, but he never would. His death at that moment had a deep lasting shock on me, I remember his last words to this day.
Well, he died I guess of emphysema, and hey, guess what I could well have!
I am off sick because I can’t get my breath, and there’s nothing wrong with my heart and I do not have diabetes…
Of course there is treatment today (but no cure) sure I never smoked, but nor did my uncle. My father always smoked in front of me and used to say “you are not a man if you don’t smoke” it was defience to an uncaring father that made sure I wouldn’t smoke.
But it looks as if I might have emphysema, it won’t stop me visiting the States, like hell it will!
Will answer as always from my lordpineapple site, open the champagne all you who hate me!
Anyway cheered myself up by ruffling feathers on the dailyhaiku site, showing them what a REAL haiku looks like! Thanks soonaquitter
The next entry, the daily haiku has gone back to morans who knows not the fuck what they are writing about. So sorry Laurie, but I am soon a quitting that site of doggeral
May 24, 2005
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The whole of my life I have tried to understand people, tried to be kind to them, understanding towards them, but each time I fail.
I am seriously thinking of forgetting Xanga and even America, for I do not deserve such generiousity. I have tried, yes I have tried to understand, to be nice, to know their feelings, but it has not worked, it has never worked for me.
I wish someone will kill me, clearly I am not a man worthy of life, I try so hard to love, but at the end of the day I know it’s me, born without the ability ever to love. If you are born without empathy then you will never be worthy of life. Hitler had the right idea putting people like me to death, for we will never be a part of life.
Only a burden on the normal.
———–
May 21, 2005
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The story of my life.
To Becca and many others, with gratitude.
I was born without morals
Without empathy
Without love,
So it is amazing in a way
That hardly anyone suffered because of me.
I had my shameful moments
All before the age of about 17,
But I was not really evil.
I have never molested a child.
Never forced a woman to have sex with me,
Never had sexual relations with a man,
Yet I was born without morals,
Without empathy.
It’s true that I had good points,
I could not blatently lie
That meant I had to make up new lives for me,
I needed to act,
To be a clown,
To write fiction
And write under various personæ.
It is what people who cannot lie do best.
Sadly I have an arrogance,
I am a terrible name-dropper,
Yet all the none-poets I met
I only met through my job,
And the only Americans
Were poets,
Like Anne Stevenson
The first person to help
Me to start to get published.
But I shamelessy name-drop
Without saying that some of whom I met
(Like John Cleese
Who thought me an insufferible little prig!)
For I was born without morals
Without empathy
Without love.
So why do certain things like the death of someone,
The cruelity to a child,
Wars, poverty and so on
Disgust me so?
To be honest
There is only one reason
I have never hurt, never killed,
Gratitude.
Grateful to people for loving me,
Every man woman or child
Who have made a kind remark to me
Every smile they gave me
And every laugh.
They should have killed me at birth
People said that,
Me included,
It could have been true
If I was not grateful
To wonderful kind people like you.
—
The Clowne From Clown.
May 2, 2005
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Many Oxford Photos at http://lovindale.blogspot.com/
Please leave comments at LordPineapple‘s blog, as I have not the time or health to keep three blogs going at present
April 21, 2005
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Party Time
Say Goodbye to the Sarah’s
April 24 at the Sarah’s Site
Active Chat in the comments
Wear your best “Cat Profiles”
Submit Recipes for
“Cat Stews” and other
Kitty Delicacies
Win your own Poem from your favorite Terry Character
2 Winners
1 for best cat profile
1 for best kitty recipe
Winner selection by the Sarah’s
Party time:
April 24, Sunday Evening
At the Sarahs Site
6:00 PM EST till ?
Food and Booze
Whatever … you choose,
It’s all coming out of your pocket
____The Sarahs
DON’T MISS IT
Come Ready To Chat
AND
BRING YOUR FRIENDS
.
.
.
April 17, 2005
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So why don’t I get anything published today?
Brain damage has resulted in me fearing rejection, so I never send anything, poems or prose off to be ascessed. I have in the past, been published all over the world; so my fear is irrational, but are not all fears?
—
I failed as a husband because I worked full time, played rugby and cricket, acted in plays (lots of rehearsals), I ran for charity and of course I wrote, spending loads of time sending things off, and I also read, something had to give.
It was not only my marriage that gave in but my mind. I started to feel lost in places, a common occurence in cases of people born with Asperger’s, but one I had long mastered. Then I started seeing things. My ex with her usual lack of tact (in a way I based The Sarahs’ on her, she also had the charm of a skunk in a perfumerie) said I was going batty, and it was true, things started to give after me seeing images like new born babies knifed, lovers that died together, raped children and a woman who hung herself from a tree.
But it was not insanity I was suffering but a series of tiny strokes that resulted in me one day falling down in Nottingham’s Woolworths and spending weeks in and out of a coma.
I started then on my spiralness toways abject poverty.
I wish I had a patron, many artists would not have been known without patrons. We would not have known about Shakespeare or Vincent Van Gogh or e e cummings without their patrons. There would have been no Virgil’s The Aenaid, no Dante’s Inferno, no Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” without patrons. Likewise there will be no finished novel “Anyway” without my patron and it’s by far the funniest thing (and the most commercial) I have ever wrote.
I eMailed Rumsfeld, told him a great poet like himself should sponsor other poets. But I got no reply from him or his flunkies. Is it cos I’m a Brit? (Or a twat?) P.S. James has other ideas!
I promised you photos, I am cramming them all onto a blogspot site slowly, having discovered Picasa2 and Hello transfers both of which (like blogspot and one of my eMail addresses) from Google and is FREE.
Free, that is the word I love. Getting a free used scanner (I hope it works) getting a free picture publisher, a free picture blog that’s easier to download pictures onto than this thing. I know, I’ve tried with this blog but it hasn’t worked, all I get are little red crosses. Last time I got Becca to help, but she is too ill to do her web-pages without worrying about mine!
So every day I am going to add a series of my pictures on the blogspot site Doctor Peter Lovindale. (link) (now who the f*** can THAT be?) Today it’s war memorabilia, tomorrow it’s a few Personal photos.
Hopefully can get my new camera and scanner to work better than I can get my dvd player and video recorder to work ie not at all, because the part of the brain for technology has gone and my family are tired of fixing things up for me as if I was a child.
One other link I’ll like the more patient to click is my updated link page where you can read the sites I visit instead of looking at dvd’s and videos. “Linking Arms” consists of websites to find poems, song lyrics, pictures… also the weird and the delightful are there from “Jump The Shark” to “The Darwin Awards”.
Coming soon, all being well, are my photos of Oxford, which I am sure are more interesting than my pictures of Clowne would be, then it’s Scotland, Menton, and maybe one day somewhere in America.
That’s all for now. Got other links like Wordfaeries new CD, but they will go on my next LordPineapple blog with the poems of my very first fictional poet “blackie fortuna”. Today The Rev Toby † (I hope that shows on your computer it is The Lord’s cross, let me know if you don’t see it as such.) shows his wares with 4 things “he” wrote only last week.
Three_Headed_Sarahs have gone for their greatest posts. also news of their party next week!
Be good, and if you can’t, wear a condom.
Terry
Funny thing a lot of fellow Xanga- Brits have gone ice-cold to me. Anyone know why?
UPDATES: 18th Personal pics on the Doctor Peter Lovindale Site. 19th Scottish photos ditto 20th Derbyshire Photos http://lovindale.blogspot.com/
My books have come, and I have a new digital camera. Sorry not been on my three blogs lately, much on my mind. Will not update till I visit you all!
April 10, 2005
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More thoughts from my commenting, and other journeys into the past, that I might otherwise not share.
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When I was ill in hospital and had been told that a lot of my brain will never work again. and I will never drive again and I knew I was to be poor and doing a crappy job, naturally I cried, until I heard that the young man I had been chatting to in the next bed, a man with a lovely wife and two bright small children, had passed away whilst I was asleep. Then I began to remember the others, the dead children in Bosnia for example, and I thought to myself, why am I more worthy of life and happiness than others who had died younger than I?
You don’t have to believe in daft gods to believe in the wonderfulness of life.
—
Ever wondered why old people are so bad-tempered and impatient? I used to until I got old, now I realise it’s the pain. People do not say they are in pain, but that does not mean that they are not, pain is every bone and muscle screaming out in agony.
I never used to be thus, I have climbed mountains, run in the London Marathon (no proof now, bastard son sold my medal for a fix), and chased after a thief for twelve miles across moorland and caught him. Now I can’t get up stairs without fighting for life!
—
I used to play rugby too, not today’s game where even the crappest of park games are full of rules, but for fun. That did not stop me getting sent off two weeks in succession. Working for a rival paper, I rarely read the local Matlock Mercury, so was amazed when I stepped into the pub on Matlock Green and everyone started calling me “Eddie”!
“You work for a newspaper and don’t read them?”
I blinked “That is why I don’t read them, reminds me of work, why?”
Why? was because the Mercury had on the front page “Elbow Eddie sent off again!”
“Eddie?”
A mate said, “They knew you worked for the Chesterfield paper but not your name, so I said it was Eddie Smith!”
Rugby was a fun sport, I was watching Chesterfield playing Mansfield once in a park that had electric pylons stretched across the pitch! I played cricket there once and whilst fielding, crashed into a pylon, I must have been one of the only fielders in history to go on record as retired by hitting an electric pylon!
Anyway, I degress, in this rugby match one of Chesterfield’s lot (they were losing heavily) kicked the ball to go over the wires when poof! the ball burst, thus ending the game and blacking out the whole of Chesterfield. Still, it was a story for me!
—
The man who had founded our rugby club in the 1920′s died suddenly and left a lot of money to improve our club. We built an extension to the bar. An author and friend, wrote a book called “The Art Of Course Rugby” (a link). inspired by teams like us, teams that played sport for the beer and not for the love of the game.
Twoberry: Would Tiger Woods walk onto the links carrying a pint of beer in his hand like we carried pints onto the pitch?
One old dour Yorkshire was leaning against the rugby goal post smoking when a referee asked if he was in the game. “Nah,” he said “But my sister is, ten bob for a shag!”
The best fun of all was when Buxton rang us up saying they can’t get a ref, so we brought one with us only to find they did have one. Ever played a game with two referees on the field? Sure enough they started fighting…
As I said, they don’t play rugby like this today!
—
Mondays was always my day off, and as my ex was busy making pottery most of the time, I used to take the kids out to the seaside, they always wanted to go to Blackpool for it’s trams and candy floss, it’s amusement arcades and it’s donkeys. I do have amusing tales to tell about it, but maybe another time, I need to rest awhile, and when I come back to this I’ll be thinking of something else!
—
I won’t write much about being a war correspondent, it was the first and last time for me. I prefered to put my memories of that into my poetry. eg:
More Noise Than The Rain.
He returned alone,
And in rags
Shut himself in his hut
And spoke to no one
On that cold wet day.
Whom of us dared to ask him
Where his wife is now?
We approached his hut slowly,
To hear him crying
And making more noise
Than the rain.
—
Ingar Gørse
—————————-
This was based on a true event in Bosnia. And wrote there. Nothing I can ever write can be worth the suffering. Nevertheless, I am a writer, and I need to remind people how in any war, the innocent suffer more than most.
Every now and then I discover a new Xanga blogger that is brilliant! Thyme_N_Again is one, she is writing about a dragon. pure genius!
—
More another day, that’s enough for you to read, the 20 or so of you. My audience may have shrunk in number but I am sure it’s a lot cleverer!
NEXT CLOWNE BLOG WILL HAVE PICTURES, I PROMISE!
—
The Clown From Clowne
LordPineapple is talking about love
The next Three_Headed_Sarahs page will be about their GRANT farewell party on the 24th of April. (Free pressies!)
April 7, 2005
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The Clowne Blog. Number 40
It was a nasty wet day, the rain was bouncing off the ground like machine-gun fire. I looked foward to a peaceful day drawing the cartoon and working on my feature pages, when the editor came out and smiled at me.
“You have three children under five do you?” he asked.
I grunted, he knew I had, what did he want?
To my sighful “yes” he said, “there’s a beautiful baby contest this afternoon at Chatsworth Park, they want a judge, you are just the man!”
Sensing a poisoned chalace I tried to argue, but it was no good.
I drove in the teeming rain to the park, the contest was to be a big event but the rain, and the fact the contest was under canvas in a muddy field, had reduced the show to just ten mothers and babies, all but one of which were crying and howling.
“Well?” a posh woman cried “that’s mine, I am Lady —, a close friend of the Duchess, so I do expect to win.”
I spent ages looking at the babies (out of spite) only one gave me a lovely smile and put his arms out and cried “mister”, it was also the one black baby here. It was no contest, he won it.
“What about my little girl?” a woman growled, but the posh “lady” pushed her aside and grabbed me with her strong arms, “why did you pick that filthy little n…..?” she screamed “Is there something the f…… the matter with you?”
“It is the only baby with any personality…” I tried to say before a brolly hit me. “N….. lover!” a woman spat. The posh woman pushed me over into the mud…I attacked back and ran to my car carring the black baby and the cup and telling the black mother to run!
We got to my car and drove off, spraying mud at the mad women.
When I got back to the paper the editor had a big grin on his face. “Lady …….. wants you sacked!”
“Where’s the tripefighter!” I snarled, and wrote exactly what happened and told the editor to publish it or have my job.
On Friday the article was front page. The Duke of Devonshire lost no time in seeing me to tell me that Lady …….. was banned from Chatsworth, and that can he have the address of the winning baby to apoligize. He was genuine, for all his wealth, he was a warm sincere man.
The black baby ended up going to university, Lady ……….’s boy ended up in prison.
I had made the right choice.
—
That was a defining moment in my life and began to turn me into a working class left-winger and a writer to many British left-wing papers.
Today I see the political parties via each other for the most racist policy. The Tories demonizing gypsies and Labour making both anti-Jewish Campaign posters and making Muslims feeling alien in their own country. And all parties are anti-immigrants. We even have a supposingly anti-european party called UKIP which in fact is a racist party. Anti-immigrants does not mean white Australians for example, but Africans and Albanians. Lady ………’s crowd have won and her nasty little views have become the norm here.
How many of these so called politicians would pick a black baby now?
—
Anyway, it’s been a strange week. A fat man whose craptrap has resulted in thousands dying through aids has died a god. A prince who sells weapons of war to countries to kill their citizens with is getting married, and a prime minister who is partly responsible for the death of many Iraqians wants to be re-elected and is standing against a racist xenophobe who looks like a vampire.
Frankly, they can all go to hell. The Pope, The Prince, and Tweedledum and Tweedledee. F*** them all!
—
The Clown from Clowne.
LordPineapple site for my poetry and news of my book.
Three_Headed_Sarahs is X-rated and contains some naughty words but all in good clean fun.
April 3, 2005
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THE CLOWN GOES NOSTALGIC
Some guestbook comments I made about my life, edited for this blog, not through arrogence but through possible interest to the rest of you.
When I was getting published all over the world, I was also an union convener (Trade union man who writes the speeches and types out the minutes and so on). We all went away for three weeks, leaving the wife’s sister in charge. The house was fine when we got back, but one of my kids counted my unopened mail, Two hundred and fifty (something) letters!
—
When I was a child, I was a bit wild, no one understood me, and I didn’t understand the world. I got along with a speech defect and the total lack of empathy by humour. A Lot of comedians do this to stop them getting bullied. I was too tough to be bullied but didn’t want to bully. (Did once or twice, to my regret.)
Anyway, my clowning was legend, and at a very early age I was called The Clown From Clowne. For example after seeing in a cowboy film a man throw his whiskey bottle into the fireplace. So I put my feet on my desk, got my milk bottle (we used to get free milk, one third of a pint) and chucked it into the school fire (lit!) and cried “Another one bar-tender!” I was seven years old.
—
I could be inventively naughty. There was once a craze for “cow-counters” little discs with cows on with a dial from one to eight. It was how many pints of milk the house wanted that morning. Well, the houses all went straight onto the pavement with just a front step and the cow-counters. Every morning for ages I stopped to do up my shoe-lace and changed just one of the counters, ie from 1 pint to 4 pints, (nothing silly so the milkman will knock on the door.), sometimes I even went back to re-change the dials just to blame the milkman (who was a nasty bit of work).
Just one house a day, so it was ages before I was caught! But caught I was. I was sent to a psychiatrist who said I had an iq above Mensa, and wrote to my school, who seemingly didn’t believe him as I was still treat as a fool. But of course I was a fool.
I was about eight years old.
—
I wrote my first poem (LINK) when I was twelve. I guess I had written poems before, but it is the first I remember (because it was published and my mother kept a copy of the magazine.) it was when I was living in Cyprus. It was about a weird cat my father was given by a policeman returning to England. the cat was even more psycho than I was!
I wrote a comic poem (lost.) about a camel who I fed and who bit everyone who went into his field except the owner and I. Every now and then another boy thought he’ll copy me, he was then bit. I didn’t realise the owner knew what I was doing but as I was kind to his camel, feeding it, stroking it’s neck, he didn’t mind. Called me “St. Frances” especially when my psyco cat was following me everywhere.
One boy got bit by the camel so he came back to hit me and he was attacked by my cat. I couldn’t stop laughing!
—
One of my many cousins was three-years old when I was aged 13. Both our families was staying at my grandmother’s large house in Barry, South Wales, and Victoria hooked on me. I took her everywhere, or more likely she followed me everywhere. Never one for friends I didn’t mind.
Ten years later Victoria still remembered some of what we did together, like finding a book of coupons someone had dropped, coupons that gave free rides to the fair. We spent most of them on the dodgems, we must have been in one together for hours smashing everything in sight. In those days you were ALLOWED to bump into other cars, try that today and a fair-ground yob jumps on your car and threatens you!
I remember such incidents because most of my childhood was boring and I was living in a hell I did not understand.
—
I collected train numbers for a while from the age of 13 when I returned from Cyprus to the age of 15. I was a fanatic for the numbers, I could remember every steam engine I had seen, their names and who built them. Something like “8P6F A4 4-6-2 1935 Sir Nigel Gresley’s streamlined. Seen 60002, Sir Murrough Wilson, 60004, William Whitelaw, 60005, Sir Charles Newton…”
I suppose I was a bit insane, but I never hurt anyone, never stole amything, never hit anyone weaker than myself, never a female, and always carried out the old lady next door dustbins without being asked, something not easy for me.
Never stole anything? well, one day to impress a girl I stole from a shop, after five days of torment I took it back and said sorry to everyone. No one sent me back, only my heart.
I got the girl but didn’t want her.
—
It might surprise the bullish Christian fundamentalists of America, but I was once highly religious, even after being buggered by a teacher-priest; some of you know the event that later turned me away, but the Church had it coming a long time before then. Quite apart from the abuser-priests, there were sadistic nuns and a church that just did not care for it’s poor. But there were exceptions. The Reverend Toby is a tribune to the parish priest in Matlock, who had a heart of gold, and who made me keep my faith long after it should have gone the way of the dodo.
He was what arrogent people would call “a simple man”, his wife was killed in the war along with his child. Even 17-23 years later he still spoke about them to me as if it was only the day before.
Never much of a talker, I became a great listener, which of course has now got it’s desserts in my poetry. The Reverend B. (never sure of his first name, but it wasn’t John as it said on the board). was a kind man, he never abused anyone, never laid his hands on anyone in anger. A cuddle from him was an innocent affair, children learn to know such things. And the old age pensioners loved him as a God.
—
Time for one more.
On-line friendships are like pen-pals of old. Or the people you meet on holiday who invite you round to their house. Happened to my former boss and his wife. A lovely couple, lived in the next county. My boss and his misses, prim strongly religious (Jewish) and formal went round there, things started off ok, but soon the other couple put on a filthy video, a real all-the-way one. My boss’s wife had never felt so ill!
—
The Clowne From Clown.
Comment Profile picture: Terry and Patrick.
Three_Headed_Sarahs A poem by Sophie and news of the Sarahs’ farewell party.
LordPineapple With Tiffy’s poems.
Link to my NEW book http://www.cafepress.com/assortedfruits
Profile pic on master page “Terry Scruffbert”
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