Weekly Diary

12/02/2012

One of the strange creatures that inhabit the garden had left a gift wrapped box by the back door.  It had a rather strange pattern of a rabbit holding a machine gun juxtaposed with a bouquet of flowers stuck in a noose.  I pulled the “Wanted Dead or Alive” poster off the flesh coloured wall and walked the dog.  The old lady who lives down the road flew by on a chariot pulled by animated birthday cakes – a straw bale monkey busy climbing a seaside rock street lamp blew the candles out.   The dog and I avoided the freckles of ice and returned home along a left arm.

13/02/2012

I got up early to arrange my collection of Viking helmets, tripped over a still smouldering long boat and then took my long eared friend out.  Above our heads famous art works had been painted on hot air balloons and we walked down the railway hill under a collection of Cezanne’s uneaten apples – my friend wanted a bite from one but I rushed on – all the ex passengers ran up the hill with gas masks and helmets.  Behind, explosions marked where each foot touched the ground even though the huge body was invisible.  I collected my short eared friend later.

14/02/2012

Back to our normal routine; June had turned into a reptile for the day covered her scales with make up and then changed into her uniform at work.   I counted the number of mirages on the fingers of one hand and brought back a white bag of greenery from the one oasis in town – at night it doubles as an alien cruise liner slipway (trips were organised to Andromeda and back).  Once back in my space tug I worked all day on my artificially intelligent sofa which would recite one of its own poems when you sat down.  I stood in the corner like a table lamp.

15/02/2012

I woke as a sculptor’s maquette for a representation of Atlas – I held a huge stone on my shoulders (I blame the state of the pillow for this.  Finally coming down the stairs with a bell cast for a medieval church in my praying arms I imagined June sat in the corner playing the harpsichord with rustic hamsters dancing a gavotte on her head – her recently coiffured hair bent down like a crop circle (I reckon it looked like a landing stage from space but the professor slowly emerging from my spectacle case categorically stated that it was caused by random air currents!).

16/02/2012

After putting on all my clothes back to front I walked backwards down the stairs remembering my past.  A group of elephants were playing cricket in the back garden as I mowed a slice of bread in readiness for breakfast in the window box (June had already left for work accompanied by a giraffe riding a unicycle).  Having only just made contact with a previously unknown civilisation living underneath the bath I left my model of a dormouse powered aircraft in the bathroom.  I then gave the cat a newly powdered Georgian wig and walked the dog.

17/02/2012

Unusually I left the house before June, who was busy peeling herself off a sheet of sticky paper (a solitary eye was suspended in the blurred space over the repeated pattern of the carpet).  I flagged down a passing wagon train and rode to the reflection-less plains were most of my happy memories reside.  I met an old man half way up a greasy pole – we both slid down together holding thin slices of unbuttered bread.  The tent canvas flapped like applause when I jumped out and rose again over the high plains.  I could see for miles; mainly inside my head.

18/02/2012

June showed me her collection of frozen clocks before I caught the train to a quaint medieval town.  I noticed the townspeople’s clothes matched the colour of the their front doors and I entered a door covered with uneven red and green stripes.  A blazing bonfire moved like an exotic dancer in the wigwam living room; a faded armchair asked for as peppermint just before I cut the clematis stalk light cord.  As the bonfire succumbed I caught the cold train home.  June was cradling a recently fired clay penguin as I entered our muted front door.

Weekly Diary

05/02/2012

Glancing at my reflected face as I floated down the stairs I noticed I had three eyes and four ears – not liking odd numbers I went off to find another mouth.  June was at the sink rescuing a whale and putting it back in its bowl.  I exchanged greeting with several animated chess pieces as they glided down the road atop a procession of giant tortoises.  June and I then went out to dinner, me with a gibbet on my head and her with a box of white crayons – as is usual in this sort of situation every drawing board she came across was also white.

06/02/2012

Neither June or I slept very well.  Her alter ego stood at the window watching an ornate pattern proceed down the otherwise blank fields, while mine looked at dancers made from street lamps shining through ice.  I got up like King Arthur with a countryside eiderdown cascading from my head; a lone figure raised his hand just as he disappeared behind a low cloud.  June went off to work in the mist.  My head ached as the dog pulled a picture of a medieval jester through the salt and vinegar flavoured streets – I kept a pack of Polish martyr cards in my pocket.

07/02/2012

June had to get up early to prepare for a lecture by a crowned crane who had flown in specially with bright white spectacles on his nose.  I had dreamed all night about selling small gifts on the sea front with a blood red sea sloshing in like wine being swilled around a glass by a critic.  I had thick fog in my head and turned on the television to get the weather forecast; instead I saw a graphic reproduction of a dinosaur’s egg in a microwave – expecting an extinct animal to enter the house I was surprised at the arrival of a stunt double for Lawrence of Arabia.

08/02/2012

I got up with both of my heads aching.  I laid on the delta wing of a Vulcan bomber and worked out a route for June and I to take.  We had to carry the bomb between us and I had painted a landscape on one side and our next door neighbour had knitted a still life for the other.  Later, I went to town with a cough, which got worse as I stood in a queue to sign my name on the side of a baking potato – after which I could attach plastic facial features and propose a fake marriage.  June got back from work as I was hoovering a path to the city of Petra.

09/02/2012

I woke from a dream where I had lost my bus ticket while waiting for my connection.  I contemplated walking (at tree top height) and then decided to write a play with people wearing classical Greek costumes and faces of goats – I remembered a childhood visit to the sea goat.  The whole performance came back to me during the day when I saw a string of Spartan hoplites march across the playing fields; I pretended to be a rabbit and attached a number of carrots to a kite cord at approximately ten inch intervals.

10/02/2012

The garden wore its grey beard and I scratched mine as a number of basalt columns marched across the horizon like cruelly truncated legs – I imagined entire cities sited on the tops of each column with endless life and death situations in each city.  I had meant to hollow out a log and travel up stream today but because of the weather I decided to stay indoors attached to an extra terrestrial search antenna like negatives from a glamour shoot drying on a provocatively strung cord.  I walked June up and down the hill King Arthur was supposed to be sleeping in.

11/02/2012

I left the Swiss army house exceptionally early for a short walk in the cutting edge cold.  Taxi drivers had congregated around the solitary light and I went through each pocket in turn for some small change.  After the blink of Argus eyes I found myself in the old man’s living room looking out.  We discussed carpets made from the remnants of old clothes and watched a crotchety black and blue bird refuse to take the lift – a procession of small birds then climbed the stairs on the outside of the building (I composed a choral piece for answer phones).

Weekly Diary

29/01/2012

June and I meant to have a lay in but got up when an ocean liner drifted over head, its shadow embracing different patterns on the old carpet in turn – we plan to remove the carpet and replace it with fluttering butterfly wings when the weather gets warmer.  After the ship had disappeared through the embroidered castle entrance we went out for dinner; I had crystallised lorry wheels and June had part of the Deccan traps.  After a walk in the early part of the Cenozoic we came home to work’ pasting our faces into the pages of a book.

30/01/2012

It was snowing outside as I rose through a trapdoor into the secret smile garden – there was just grass and witches hats; it was fun lifting the hats in turn looking for the frog (the prince walked to town with me to clean the streets).  I came back with a hat made from green leaves and forgotten voices emanating from my coat pockets – the top pocket voice had a speech impediment and the general populace claimed she was a witch.  I covered my studio floor with dried flowers and then painted a landscape on a tennis racket.  Sometime later I painted a face on the ball.

31/01/2012

I walked June along a tight rope two inches above the ground – I was scared we might fall.  She went inside; all her memories wrapped inside an apple, which she gave to the teacher who taught her nothing.  I pulled the ripcord and glided back to the hair parting runway.  I worked in a bathysphere at the bottom of an ocean trench until the school bell rang and I went to town.  June was snorkelling in wet concrete when I arrived with black lines across my face like badly superimposed Lone Rangers.  We came home in the fragmented night.

01/02/2012

I thought I would have a swim in a tea cup before I walked June to the ocean she works in.  We walked on water, her towards a rock formation taken from Leonardo’s Madonna Of The Rocks and me beside the recently exposed vertebrae of an unnamed sauropod.  I got back home just as the bell of the sunken village started to toll.  I watched mechanical diggers and cranes perform their mating ritual from the gantry of a Saturn Five rocket and then settled down to work until June rang from inside a black and white photograph of Arcadia.

02/02/2012

Strange music was playing in my head, and curiously in every enclosed space I entered.  I shut myself in the cupboard under the stairs and listened to a symphony of footsteps going up and down the stairs – this was rather odd as I was the only person in the house.  I had to go to town so drew a map on my back and laughed as other people followed it; on my front was a picture of an empty wardrobe although I noticed there was a tailored gorilla suit hanging there when I returned home.  I decided not to put wear it and made a pair shorts from used teabags.

03/02/2012

I got up early and left the house dressed only in a mixed selection of rubber bands.  I stretched my way to the bitterly cold countryside where I met the warm old man sitting on a a loaf of bread;  I sat on a stale scone and we exchanged stories about winter sunshine and living in caves.  I photographed my own cave art and then rode out on a baby mammoth.  On my return home I settled down at the controls of the space freighter I had been piloting since a child – I wasn’t sure what the cargo was but I heard something stir deep down inside.

04/02/2012

I metamorphosed into a puppet shortly after June went out to bury herself in a handmade birthday cake.  With some curiosity I pulled in the strings to see who was controlling me; oddly I found it was me – I said hello but I obviously had something else on my mind.  June returned with a small ocean which hadn’t been named yet; we counted the fish and then divided by six.  We then used this number to work out what to have for dinner, unfortunately it turned out to an unoccupied block of flats and the crumbling edge of an ancient glacier.

Weekly Diary

22/01/2012

I had to get up early when an army of little red birds marched up the stairs and headed for our wagon train bedroom.  I visited the cat who was reading a copy of Playgirl while simultaneously inventing a lavatory for use by all the domestic animals.  I pulled the curtains back across my spectacles as June descended the talking stairs with a washing up bowl in her mouth.  We spent some of the day in Arcadia picking up fallen fruit for our new range of eco-swim wear – I was a Gerald Shepherd and she was a shepherdess.

23/01/2012

June went back to work, I walked with her across the black rainbow bridge.  I came back home to find every room filled with smiling ballerinas; they were packed in so tightly they couldn’t move.  When I stepped into an alternative reality I went into my dancing studio but I still couldn’t move.  I decided to perch on a branch to paint like a robin on a Christmas card – all of which had been sent away.  I had to go out after watching a horse and cart emerge from a railway tunnel in the living room wall and counted the contrails across the old lady’s sky.

24/01/2012

It was raining hard when I got up and I protected myself by sitting in a bucket – Jack and Jill went by but never heard me call.  I noticed June was sat in the middle of a now leafless bush taking to our neighbour (who was standing in similar vegetation holding a candle she had only just extinguished).  I climbed out of my molten lava bath and attached reptilian scales one at a time.  After leaving it until tanks had been invented and used in the battle of Cambrai I walked the dog and then settled in my studio like a blanket on a bed of sea urchins.

25/01/2012

I got up when a giant arthropod shuffled through the bedroom casting a shadow several metres long.  It had traffic lights at the end of its antenna which stopped the traffic throughout the town – in this century and the preceding two.  When it had gone I went back to bed where June was building a brick outhouse.  She left the outhouse through the fungal door and I adjusted my micro-circuitry so I could pick up radio signals originating from down town Venus.  I spent the day painting while listening to Venusian chamber music.

26/01/2012

June had to go to the Saturn Five launch pad to get ready for her course on the history and culture of amoebic life forms.  I wore a bacteria T-shirt and hung from scaffolding like Spanish Moss.  I saw a procession of android nuns amble by and then dropped to the ground to play nought and crosses on my own face using mud from a genuine Hopi village.  June came back dressed in a baguette so I put a partly buttered slice of bread on the top of my head and waited for an emissary from an alien civilisation to land on it.

27/01/2012

I got up as early as a slither of light underneath a bedroom door and trudged downstairs with a replica of the houses of parliament on my shoulders.  I found my friends, the rooks, playing hoopla and I shut the door behind me – the lady in the orb floating above mine opened her handbag and Danae spilled out all over a shower of gold.  I met the old man wearing his Zeus shirt and we talked about people who had high fences. I foolishly said if  he could find one higher than mine I would jump over it – a friendly cow offered to jump over it with me.

28/01/2012

I pulled a coil of rope (complete with the skeletal remains of a climber who forgot to let go) from my Wellington boots and travelled to the top of a hill – a passing giant had laid out a cruet set and I accidentally knocked over the pepper.  The pale white ghosts of cows shuffled by trying to escape from a lorry.  I found an alarm in the middle of a thorn bush and turned it off - not realising it had already woken the collection of heads piled up in the corner; they spoke but I still called them fallen fruit.  I counted blinking eyes in the bonfire before coming home.

Weekly Diary

15/01/2012

June spent a large part of the night clinging to The Leaning Tower of Pisa while I almost slept in an underground vault – I would have been better off without the waltzing couples with cockroach heads.  I didn’t spray paint the garden as planned; June and I preferring to ride a roll of wallpaper to Rupert Bear mountain and back.  While on the washing powder summit we were charged an extortionate price for a bowl of eyelash soup and toasted shipwreck sandwich.  I moaned about this the rest of the day (with a glove puppet undressing on my hand).

16/01/2012

I caught June following a will o’ the wisp and brought her back coughing madly.  I feared the worst and slipped the anchor of the silent ship (only to find the dog playing the electric guitar in the reptilian hallway).  We talked from adjoining girls and buoys until I found a strand of seaweed to climb.  I found myself in an ogre’s studio and spent my time painting in the rarefied air.  Every canvas had wings and eventually flew away, watched by a bespectacled cockerel on a geostationary weather vane.  I put a sculpture of David in my sandwich box.

17/01/2012

June was sleeping on a crashed Messerschmitt 109 fighter when I got up; the tendrils of a grape vine wound round my spectacles – I took off using the rotors on top of my pointed hat.  I waited for the spectral tongues to be withdrawn into spectral mouths before walking the dog along an imaginary playmate path – beside the patented mechanical duck pond.  I flew into my studio and sat myself down in the background of a large painting on my ivy clad easel.  From here I could see the black shapes land and take off again.

18/01/2012

June and I didn’t sleep all; I found myself playing noughts and crosses on the checked shirt a cowboy was wearing (I was tucked up in his top pocket) while June approached from within a giant marsupial’s pouch – surprisingly there was two members of the Scots Guards still marching beside her.  We got up with corkscrew eyelashes and went to see the invisible doctor; she wore a bright pink scarf and I had my invisible pants round my ankles.  Afterwards she slept in the engine compartment of a luxury yacht and I worked in my sailing studio.

19/01/2012

June slept better; on the the wing of a Dakota hedge hopping immediately after the end of the Second World War if she is to be believed.  I slept on a torpedo but kept waking up to check if had been fired – when I got up there was the same number of merchant ships on the windowsill as when I went to bed.  June danced to the music of a medieval troubadour and I worked in the cling film silence of my studio (it was constructed inside the skeleton of a blue whale washed up on an Isle of Wight beach in the early years of the last century.

20/01/2012

I got up very early, leaving June asleep in the bed made from loaves and fishes.  I grabbed a ploughshare as a giant red tractor sped by and travelled into the heart of the bell chime countryside where I found the bell ringer a little tied up (I was late and only had empty packets in my shopping bag).  We peeled away memories from the childhood stick and I followed a pathway from under the carpet to under the Arthurian hills.  When I got home June was cleaning bricks before setting them back in the living room wall.

21/01/2012

In a dream I tried to find the stairs and then woke up in a fairground with June on a roundabout and me on a roller coaster – I came to stop with Peter Pan’s signature on my cricket bat.  June and I went out after breakfast, she wore matching hats and I put my head in a box.  All the people in town had car engine heads, some of which needed a mechanic.  We came hope with a shopping bag full of dinosaur footprints and sundry tropical tree parts.  Once home June incubated rocks and I made a forest – we later met for a jungle tea.

Weekly Diary

08/01/2012

June and I spent the night in an inflatable spacecraft, orbiting Mars and Venus before knocking the smile off the face of the moon.  After a carefully orchestrated crash landing I walked through the nursery rhyme corridors with a long cloak covered with stars.  I put a giant cheese roll in the loft and then June and I went out to dinner; we ate in the middle of an archaeological dig – neither of us could identify the skeleton whose hand protruded skywards from the middle of the table although I must admit his ring looked familiar.

09/01/2012

June left the house riding a penny farthing, I would have waved goodbye but I had too much seaweed wrapped round my head.  I picked up a swordfish phone after feeding the animals and spoke to a god.  I had to go to town on a flying dinner plate with violins stuffed in my holsters – I planned to be the fastest player in the East.  I came home pursued by a posse of dog headed men and then reconstructed the early days of the trojan war using Airfix kits.  I celebrated this achievement by sitting a baby sea anemone in my lap.

10/01/2012

June had a cough and wrote a musical in her sleep; I was trapped in the auditorium with rumours of a wild beast roaming the theatre.  She got up and slithered into clothes while the dog and I read stories to each other.  Imagining the calligraphic resonances of a pod of killer whales swimming in treacle I got up in a fireman trance and cleaned the decks of the world’s first flying submarine. Once safely back in my dream-time world I performed a stick man ballet in a wood before designing a bonfire hat.  June grew a beard.

11/01/2012

The inside of the concert venue was aching as I walked across a bridge of live crocodiles to reach the high point of the garden – bat wings grew from the blancmange hat I was wearing.  I went across the forearm bridge to get some palm leaves and came back across flexing biceps with eight fingers on each hand.  I gave the rabbit some cabbage leaves and he gave me his copy of Twelfth Night; completely unabridged.  I wrestled with a cellophane angel that moved in response to columns of warm air and painted eyes on telescope lenses.

12/01/2012

The morning light streaming into my mythical window was eclipsed by a smiling face.  I pulled the curtains again and walked the dog along a length of model railway track.  It was while pulling myself along in the Welsh mountains that I thought up the idea of steam powered armchairs.  The mechanical digger outside attempted some very simple yoga moves and I trekked across a cat litter tray in search of King Solomon’s Mines.  I had spoken to a number of Play-doh men before June came home in a nursing home uniform.

13/01/2012

I got up early and left the house with a length of tramway running down my back, quite close to the spine.  The invisible mermaid curled up in the small of my back was worst affected and threatened to grow wings.  I met the old man sitting on a Welsh rarebit island in the middle of deep brown sea.  We talked about three headed farmers and I then took a photograph of an especially strident mark on the carpet.  I caught a milk float home, splashing about in curds and whey, and then crept back from town with a smile painted on the back of my head.

14/01/2012

June still felt ill and adopted a number of very curious poses on the rim of a Wedgwood saucer.  I preferred to exercise in the cup (even though it had a chip) and then shot out of the window like a celestial brainwave, not stopping until I touched down in the middle of town.  While there I searched for a pair of fincuffs for the goldfish and a wrought iron gate for the turtle tank – a helicopter circled inside my hat causing a curious sensation on my scalp (which an unknown sea sprite had painted a very bright mauve).

Weekly Diary

01/01/2012

June and I went out for the day, travelling on a beam of light, we met the mythological monsters in the plastic seaside and stayed in a packet of time with a mountain goat of food. As cosmic beachcombers we watched the ebb and flow of sentient shadows and then recorded our impressions of meeting an apricot sky for the first time.  As captives of two legged centaurs we watched a stasis of a wedding with the bride and groom moving only a few centimetres an hour. A plastic person knocked the door and asked to come in.

02/01/2012

June went up the hill to work twice, each time in a different reality – I went back to bed and pulled a third reality over my head (if only for the brief period between the pineapple night and the candy floss morning).  I walked to a circle of trees immediately after taking the pterodactyl for a flying walk (I walked, she flew – this is the world that people with four eyes see).  I entered the sacred circle like a shark in a goldfish bowl and came back with hair growing from my eyelids, entering the house just as an express train left it.

03/01/2012

The rain and wind stamped on the morning as the animals and I sheltered in a skyscraper boot.  As the clouds parted for a mere flick of a switch I went out as fast as I could; my hands like crab earrings and my shoelaces undone.  I placed my woollen hat on a holly tree and undid the ropes of the crepe paper man who was cowering behind a broken fence – I remembered the story of a anthropomorphic crack in a willow who had the voice of a sailor.  Later, I waited in the sty for June to return from work pretending to be Circe.

04/01/2012

I started the day in two dimensions, leaving the house via a crack in the door and walking down the road with a playing card on each arm – I left the Queen of Hearts at the corner shop and drew footprints back up the flickering street.  While the dog walked on stilts I sunk into a subterranean studio and worked on a replica of Olympus; the gods had came and gone leaving behind their rubbish (which was collected a day later than usual because of the holidays).  I talked to the cat about the colour green – June came in with a red face.

05/01/2012

I called the night Gallipoli and then started the day on the beaches with the wind a sword pulled from a gem encrusted scabbard (an alternative image came to mind of an artificial leg being pulled from a plastic downpipe).  I kept inside most of the day as the exterior of the house was licked by quickly passing tongues.  I painted a vampire inside a werewolf and then a bristlecone pine inside a tartan sock.  Contemplating putting both feet in one sock I ventured out, only to come back quickly inside a car carved from freshly baked bread.

06/01/2012

I rose early holding a container of Nineteenth Century air which I wished to present as a gift.  I caught a bus at the railway station and travelled to the open country like a cloud – descending like smoke into the giant’s living room.  I noticed the walls were comprised of crosswords waiting to be completed and the floor was laid out like a chess board; my tea cup and I took the knight.  I caught the bus home again wondering why the people in front had cuckoo clocks for heads and those behind lifelike models of the white cliffs of Dover.

07/01/2012

June was the first to jump onshore and counted her steps to work (if the resulting number was divided by six and a half it would give the dress size of Cleopatra).  I descended from the roof of a seven storey building some time later, flying by mere force of will.  I found myself in the middle of a wood with a steam train round my neck.  Fallen trees looked like dead warriors and the choir who had congregated at the treeline denounced all wars.  I came home holding onto a set of multi-coloured chains – I pulled one as I neared the door.