Tue MARCH7, 2000.

There is a rival local newspaper to the Gazette called the Accrington Observer. It peddles the usual stuff – petty criminalities such as WEED SNIFFING HOOLIGANS BEAT UP PERT DRAG QUEEN or DEBACLE AT ACCRINGTON INTELLECTUALS (sub Headline ‘“We must stamp this out!” says President ‘) or LUCKY ESCAPE FOR TIGGY THE CURIOUS CAT! (sub Headline – ‘Cat plummets from Helicopter’). I’ve offered them some stories in the past, notably about a night of high UFO activity which resulted in a persistent high pitched whine of ethereal origins driving all the dogs in town wild. Anyway I popped in to their meagre shop front premises on the High Street to sound them out about articles they needed. I suggested one about Dr. Heather Spriggs the GP who also takes moody B&W photos of the town at night and has an exhibition on at the moment in the Blast Gallery. They didn’t go for that, but suggested I might visit Reg Wuvvel whose budgie sings hits from the 70’s. Since money was a bit short I accepted the story and clambered up the narrow alleys that lead to the sprawling Derwent Estate, one of Accrington’s lesser attractions. Reg, resplendent in a string vest and pyjama bottoms told me his budgie had died a couple of nights ago. He played me a tape of its shrill voicings (hardly musical) of some Bay City Rollers songs. The tape was mostly Reg shouting obscenities at the poor bird. He then showed me the stiff blue body of Bobbie the Budgie in a shoebox. It was a little dishevelled (the cat had had a go at it) and wore an expression of intense ennui. I said (lying) that the Observer’s photographer might call around soon. This triggered an unearthing of a barrage of photos of Bobbie as he sung songs and flew about (“there he is, that blue blur in the corner.”). I scribbled some notes and took my leave a touch depressed. Down in town my depression was compounded when I observed the juxtaposition of an old lady bent double struggling along with a stick and the dim interior of a meat van lined with hanging carcasses. I guess if I was a Francis Bacon type I’d be inspired to throw some red-pink paint onto a canvas and stencil in some poor wretch with haemorrhoids, but I’m just a dreamy intellectual moving in a sphere within a sphere and heading for eternal oblivion. Things improved after this I’m glad to say.

Sun MARCH 12, 2000.

Rachel, Duncan, Emma & myself went for an Indian meal at the Old Bombay restaurant in Market Street. Afterwards we adjourned to Rachel & Emma’s pad in a posh quarter of town where the natives refrain from squawking their usual bilious dialogue, and subtly lit sticky trees ponder on the meaning of the ROOTS DILEMMA. Do we have roots or are we disembodied entities floating up in these fine regions of sometime Leafiness?

We made a fuss of Crispin who was far more interested in watching TV – it likes football, no doubt hypnotised by the rhythmic movements. Rachel, who had a cold and could scarcely croak, made us all a cocktail which was undrinkable. I put mine in a plant pot. We chilled out on some Sherbet & Armignac and had a game of croquet in the hallway to the strains of Purcell’s ‘Fairy Queen’, which blasted out from the bedroom. I hooped a 3-ender and clipped the wodge. Rachel won of course (she was Champion at Cheltenham Ladies College 2 years running). She told me that Harpo Marx once played 5 ends and only Drew a Shoveller. I’ll have to check that out in my 1^st edition of HARPO SPEAKS!

Emma says she’s suspicious of some people who lurk outside on occasions, thinking they may be trying to kidnap Crispin having found out that it is a rare Astrophic breed. It’s possible I may have let this slip out down the pub or else more people read my Diary than I’m aware of. Duncan went out to have a look but only succeeded in spraining his ankle which Rachel nursed for him, rather unnecessarily I thought.

We chewed on some root ginger & ate Harfarry Gleeton Tarts (a speciality of the local deli – they’re made with spiced lemon shrites and Colax frond). Rachel is very into unusual foods. Her father owns a factory of some sort.

I commented on the fruity, bilbious integlei that resonated about the house. It reminded me of the ambience of Dr. Johnson’s birthplace in Lichfield (a fine museum open to the public). I received blank stares for my trouble. I don’t think Rachel is an intellectual. I perused Rachel’s fine inherited library once more and discovered some fine little volumes, one especially I recognised as a rare volume of musings by the 17^th century mystic Henry Hall Struther, full of interesting illustrative plates. I felt a small temptation to pocket the volume for further research but it would be the thin end of the hedge. Duncan & I quivered home quoting pompous poetry.

Fri 17^th MARCH 2000.

A nice day for a stroll through Accrington. As I exited Shuttleworths’ the butcher with my dainty piece of SCRAG END, I heard a little boy shout excitedly to its mother, “There’s Superman! There’s Superman! Mummy, there’s Superman!” Naturally I assumed he was referring to myself, walking confidently erect, shoulders back, replete in my new silk shirt with clintos as styled by Mudrahoon, but checking just in case I noticed the direction of his idolatrous stare was in fact towards a short, dumpy, gaudily coloured figurine outside a new Café. The bright orange torso was offset by a yellow cloak in the style of the Superhero, and he held a signboard above his head which read: ‘THE PLANET Café’. It was a laughable representation of manhood, a dwarf lacking demonism, machismo essence denuded, and it wore an expression of dumb self-righteousness on its sickeningly white face. I could only pity the toddlers’ choice of worshipful shiny figureheads, certainly a step down from the bizarrely erotic Postman Pat.

The new café looked so utterly conventional & naff that I simply couldn’t resist popping in and ordering a pot of tea and an Eccles Cake. I sat at a table adjoining another where an elderly lady was rummaging around in her shopping bag. A deathly cute little dog sat obediently next to it on the floor and it looked up at me with its huge eyes. Suddenly it happened! That THING where you’re suddenly displaced to another dizzy dimension full of echoing chambers, booming voices shouting instructions, sultry music pounding in the far distance, your heart throbs into an alien rhythm that quickly becomes a Rumba, the visual cortex becomes suffused with misty images of narrow winding streets in a windswept coastal town, somewhere you’ve never been but is evocatively familiar, until, rounding a tight corner you’re confronted with the eternal ocean, billowing and blue-green.

I surface into the dog’s eyes, the woman still rummaging away in her capacious ‘body-parts’ bag. A shrill TING sounds from the till and my neck flounces a cheery tingle.

I enjoyed my tea & cake at the Planet Café. I’d recommend it. I did overhear a youngish woman complain about something she found in a sandwich but I daresay it was nothing more than a stray cloik. Some people are overly fussy.

There’s definitely something to be said for redirecting one’s attention to something beyond the immediate ‘Process-Orientated NOW’ and for sliding off into the Planet Café corners of LIFE and seeing what lurks there for the open minded miners of the Alternative Seams.

Thu 23 MARCH 2000,

Duncan went berserk in Asda yesterday. He’s in custody at the Filbert Street Police Station, banged up in some filthy rat-strewn moth-eaten cell (I imagine, not having inhabited a place like this before). I got scant details from his girlfriend who was with him at the time, shopping. He’d left her to find some Curried Scotch Eggs and then all hell broke loose! She saw him grapple with a ludicrously tall & thin Security Man. Duncan was flailing in every direction like a rutting windmill and screaming something unintelligible that sounded like NAY TURNIP! NAY TURNIP! Needless to say this is all very unlike Duncan, the laidback (virtually unconscious) Bad Poet. My theory is that he finally realised just how bad a poet he really is and couldn’t deal with it, lashing out on the flimsiest pretext, perhaps after being nudged by a trolley. I could imagine those rejection letters piling up on his sideboard accusing him by their very voluminousness.

I’m rather hesitant to visit him behind bars – maybe he won’t recognise me (a person from the past that he can no longer face up to, a vaguely familiar ghost come to torment him with his failure), perhaps he’ll start ranting or else break down completely and I’ll have to offer him my unclean hanky to mop up the glokky tears. Instead I comforted his girlfriend Nunia by ringing her up and discussing the Budget with her (they’ve put up the tax on Elton John’s wig again, those unkind Exchequer types with their gleaming secretaries salivating at the prospect of a Pedigree Chum advert – a little word to the execs at ITV, no problem – is she game? ‘course she is, she’s from the Essex Delta – say no more!).

Meanwhile I seem to have lost my favourite baseball cap, the one with GRIPPED spangled in purple around the Hemsock. This cost me a fiver down POUNDSTUNNER and I’m seriously pissed off at losing it.

I listlessly walked to Budgens, gliding smoothly around the pool of liquid in the entranceway (off white, with stencillings of ubittumen solids) and bought some tins of degraded Quagmoll Syrup (it’s 14p cheaper than the fresh and virtually indistinguishable unless you happen to have a portable HPLC kit with you and inject a sample to identify some lumpy, extraneous peaks). I spread the silky frog-green sap onto my toast. It does wonders for my digestion.

The ALISTAIR FFITZ WEBSITE is now available for discerning punters who would like to feast their eyes on camp images of Crispin (my ex-cat) and myself + strong images of an Accringtonian tendency. People who are easily offended by THE TRUTH need not visit. I have no wish to upset Troiglmetoads, however reductionist their bewilderment.

Saturday, 25^th MARCH 2000.

Duncan has been removed to a secure institution on the moors near Blackburn. It’s called ARCHIBALD HOUSE. I went to see him today. He was under sedation (so I was told) hence the serene quietness as he scribbled on a pad, lying on a bed in his dressing gown. He looked up at me with his doleful eyes and grinned. “Look,” he said showing me his writing pad, “I’ve been prolific. Ever since they put me on some tablets – little blue ones - I’ve been freed up. It’s all been pouring out – I can’t stop it even if I wanted to…………..” He chatted on for 15 minutes, then 30 minutes, then……………At an unsuitable opportunity I excused myself and left the room. He was still talking as I closed the door behind me. A passing nurse said, “He’s much better isn’t he?”. I simply smiled weakly. I actually thought he was better off ranting; after all he had a lot to rant about. His poems didn’t hit their mark, they shimmied past and fell to the ground, probably into something unpleasant and remained there fertilising Gobuggly beetles. I could only hope that the old Duncan would return to fight his old battles, however much a foregone conclusion they might be.

I climbed the hill on a perfectly cool, sunny day and called in at Rachel & Emma’s pad. Rachel was out and Emma offered me a glass of sherry. Crispin sat on my lap (highly unusual behaviour unless it wants to try out its CLAWS SURPRISE MANOUVRE) apparently content, purring a soothing language of idiocy – THE MICE ARE OUT TODAY WALTER! HERRINGS! HERRINGS! – I have an instinct for these things. We all listened to Mozart and dozed off.