Flâneur on the Solent

The ould fellas sayings part 2

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:20:23 +0100

Another favourite of mine...

'How was the soup?'

'Ahhh begob, it was so thick youse could trot a mouse on it!!!'

Comments

True Happiness.

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:54:00 +0100

Phrase of the week... Me on the phone to the ould fella.

'How's your week been?'

'Ah, just grand. I had some good news and I was as happy as a dog with two cocks!!!'

'nuff said. Although it did leave me wondering just how happy that would make me if I were a Canine. I guess I'll never know.

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For Wildwitch... re Mayors and Pumpkins.

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:35:56 +0100

I do wonder about some people. I usually wear a pentacle although you generally can't see it. One hot summer though I was on the tube in London and wearing a black tee shirt and it was on view. As I was going up the escalator at Kensington, a woman coming down suddenly leaned over face to face with me as she passed and hissed 'HELL'!!! And I said, 'And which direction are you going in now?'

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Art and Flu.

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:01:40 +0100

I'm stuffed with a cold. Not swine flu but 'man' flu so I'm having a whinge! Nobody in the house at the moment to whinge to so you lot are copping it instead.

It's a bloody weird thing but I was expecting it as I've had a cold on the same week for the past few years. Sure enough, it kicked in last night. Does the human system have a memory that resurrects viruses like an alarm clock set to go off? Mmmm... Dunno.

Today I'm going to hang the first show at the gallery viewing space of my new art dealership. Back in the art dealing world and self employed again! The dawn of a new age. Who cares about having a cold anyway. I don't...

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TV Moan. Now let's see that again!!!...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:12:43 +0100

Cable now seems to have only five main themes.

'Most shocking video clips', 'fat reducing surgery' TV, 'American syndicates' (eg CSI, Without a Trace etc), people who catch snakes (wow, isn't there a lot of snakes!), and 'ghost watches' (eg Ghost Hunters, Most Haunted etc, and wow isn't there a lot of ghosts too!).

On the subject of ghost hunting see the clip of one of my FB friends, comedian Glen Maney, tackling the subject in one of his sketches...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUMJQKOJtSM

Thank God for people like Glen and clever complex and metaphorical drama shows like True Blood and Generation Kill.

And I've just realised that Countryfile is now Sunday evening viewing. How on earth did I miss this tumultuous event? Now I know that terrestrial television is dead for sure.

BTW does everybody else hate that bloody Go Compare advert with the opera singer that seems to be on every five minutes because the credit crunch and the internet have killed off television advertising?)

Hey!! I've just plugged them!!! I should get a fee for that...

'Go Compare, go compare... la dee dah'

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Drugs vs Alcohol

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:00:24 +0100

In the midst of the unattractive scenario of the goverment sacking experts they have hired because they disagree with the goverments own findings, I offer the following observations on drugs versus alcohol.

1) ALCOHOL. I had a friend who got so drunk one night that he not only called a friend in Sweden from the UK for two whole hours and couldn't remember the conversation the next day, but he also thought that it would be a good idea to eat an Orange. Nothing wrong there except he decided in his stupor that it would be best served microwaved and the ensuing explosion took two days of scrubbing to get the microwave vaguely normal.

2) DRUGS. A guy who used to drink in a pub I played music in regularly was a prolific dope head. He was so stoned one morning that he walked into the road without looking and got run over. Nothing unusual there except he got run over by a milk float.

MY CONCLUSION. The goverment and the experts are both wrong. One medium doesn't privelage itself over the other in terms of social danger. They both make people stupid, careless, and a danger to themselves and others in entirely equal measure!!!

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Back.

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:38:17 +0100

After about five months away from this blog I am tempted to write about what I have seen, where I have been, and what I have done. But I'm not going to so you'll have to imagine instead. (Unless you're friends with me on FB in which case you're exempt LOL).

Sometimes a blog break is a good thing. More proper blogging tomorrow.

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Junk day...

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:54:30 +0200

I'm going to have an easy day as I have a private view to go to tonight and my eyes are entirely strained from too much time working on the computer over the past few days.

This morning I am going to go through boxes of old belongings that should have been sorted out a long time ago. What treasures (or junk) might I find?... I wonder... I'll let you know...

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It's got your eyes... and your brothers...

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:37:08 +0200

I just watched 'The Hospital' and this week it was on teenage mothers.

One of the questions from a Doctor to an expectant Vicky Pollardesque mother to be was 'Is the Father a blood relative?'

Perhaps the programe should have been called 'Deliverance'...

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Only in the Island City Part Five...

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:27:50 +0100

The scene... I'm driving down St Ronans Avenue.

There's a man, walking along, wearing normal clothes but with a very lifelike horses head mask that covered his entire head!!!

VERY Wicker Man!!!

Only in the Island City ...

PS I was looking out to see if the Salmon of Knowledge was going to join him.

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Only in the Island City Part Four...

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:10:53 +0100

Across the city campus I'm walking from Eldon Building in Winston Churchill Avenue to Park Building behind Guildhall Square and I'm going over the little bridge just past the Courthouse and Uni Halls of Residence...

A man cycles towards me and the other pedestrians across the bridge from the other direction. He passses the woman in front of me, looks at her, and shouts

'PENISAURAS, PENISAURAS'!!!!!!

before cycling off.

Only in the Island City...

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Homeboy.

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:47:05 +0100

Today I am in my hometown on a visit…

The pub in the centre of town is being demolished, my old college has been annexed into a campus of the college that was its competitor when I was there, and the photography shop that had been in town for fifty years is now a bookmakers. The registry office I got married in is now a snazzy office building, the supermarket has been turned into three separate shops, and the old cake shop that I used to have coffee in on Wednesday afternoons when I was a student is now a discount store.

I’m now in a new coffee shop typing out my thoughts on a Macbook to post tonight and looking every part the cyber yuppie that I intended not to become when I was a student here. How different I am now from what I was then! The best part of three decades since I used to walk from the college to the now gone cake shop with Jack Kerouac in my hand and my head full of art and poetry wearing a tatty old jacket and scruffy faded jeans. I wonder where all the people I knew then are now. I know the stories of some and we’ve caught up with each other over the years. Some never made it and I paused earlier outside the college remembering one good friend who died in a drowning accident when he was 26. I wonder what he would say now if he could see how the town has changed beyond recognition from how we both once knew it? What would he make of me now? Do I bear any resemblance to the person he knew all those years ago? I would hope so. Time however changes everything and the street is full of ghosts today.

After I’ve finished my coffee I’m going to walk to my Grandparents old house to see what it’s like now and I may drop in on my relatives who live in the next road. Each footstep I take today seems like a memory and they seem to weigh strangely on me. There is so much that I have left behind me, especially in the last decade. So many hard times but also so many good times. I never felt like this was my hometown when I lived here. I wasn’t born in this town and I was never attracted to its environment but it has grown on me; sometimes like strangling Ivy and sometimes with a degree of fondness.

Later I’ll set course for the Island City and I’ll look forward to seeing the Spinnaker Tower appear over the crest of the A3. It’s not my hometown but it feels more like my hometown than anything else since I left the real one and I’m glad of that. Maybe it’s time to park up the virtual Vardo and allow myself to feel truly at home for the first time in a very long age. Kushti Bok my friends...

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Too weird for words but great...

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 19:43:59 +0100

Why didn't I think of this... and more to the point how did they think of this?...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JD1KOXbrfw&feature=related

Take a Russian Gas Mask... Turn it into a Kazoo!!!

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Bloscars...

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:22:48 +0100

Being a newbie of less than two months I didn't consider it proper of me to take part in voting in the Bloscars this year (although I fully intend to make up for it next year!!) so I am both stunned and honoured to find myself nominated in the Male Newcomer category!!!

My thanks for those of you who were kind enough to nominate me. The tenners are in the post to you now in plain brown envelopes with no return address marked on the outside of them and all in unmarked notes...

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Only in the Island City Part Three...

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:43:14 +0100

I stopped off in the pub for a quickie at lunchtime and some people sat on the end of my table. A Lady with them was talking about how she had found out that nicotine patches were being given to kids at school in an effort to help them give up smoking...

And what, according to her, are the kids of Pompey doing with them?...

Apparently they are giving up smoking cigarettes but are sticking several patches on themselves as a substitute...

Or else they are selling the patches on as a kind of 'nicotine hit without inhalation' deal...

Now that's entreprenuership!!!

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Only in the Island City Part Two...

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:50:46 +0100

A conversation I heard in the street between two posh men screaming like Banshee's at one another...

"What the fewk do you mean? How fewking dare you!!! I had fewking good reason!!!"

"So your Cat continually shits in my garden and yet I'm the one who ends up with the fewking Police knocking on my door?!!!"

"Well yes, you fewking moron. And it may have something to do with the fact that you hurled a bag of my Cats shit at me and my wife in the street and it exploded ALL FEWKING OVER US!!!"

Yet again I was laughing too much to intervene...

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BCUK Anagram Challenge!!!

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 23:01:34 +0100

Ok...

Look at the advertising slots on your profile pages...

Now pick single words or sentences.

Next go to the Home page of BCUK and look at todays Tags...

Now pick some.

Put the whole together to make a sentence. You are allowed to change the punctuation to make your sentence but the words and phrases cannot be altered.

Here's mine...

"Great deals on illiterate barking boring second hand singles in your area. Browse our local listings for free 30 day trial."

Now over to you...

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Only in the Island City!!!

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:58:34 +0100

Two Chav's, both in burbery and baseball caps, one in a wheelchair with a broken leg and the other pushing it.

Drunk as lords the pair of them, walking out against the traffic lights, cars swerving to avoid them, car drivers hooting and shouting at them.

They stop in the middle of the road, the one pushing swaying from side to side while the one in the wheelchair shouts obscentities at the driver of the car that's had to swerve and nearly hit the kerb to avoid them...

Only in my beautiful Island City... Play up Pompey!!!!!!

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My night of torrid, leather clad, exhausting, and deliciously wicked hot sex...

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:54:01 +0100

Was totally...........

and utterly........

In my fevered imagination.... Sorry folks , I just wanted to repeat my experiment and see how many of you would have a look without reading the
rest of the text properly yet again... Are my visitor numbers rising? Hee hee...

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Never again...

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:12:19 +0100

...but actually I probably will!!

Great fun night out but suffered for it all day today... Thanks Tom for the hangover cure. It worked!!!

And it looks like I might be off to both France and Sweden for a visit... Yay!!!

Hope everybody is having a nice evening...

P's going to cook something and I'm about to watch mindless TV in between reading a book.

And the room has finally stopped spinning which is really, really good...

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The Fabric of Art...

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:49:05 +0100

I got in last night and ended up watching a programe following photographer Rankin as he recreated a selection of fashion photographs by the great names of the genre, Guy Bourdin, David Bailey, Helmut Newton etc...

I say recreate and not copy because, except for one or two of the pieces, he resorted to using his normal digital equipment which to me defeated the object of the excercise. The first one he did, a Cecil Beaton photograph, was actually made using similar lighting techniques and an 8X10 Large Format camera. He shot two frames on this of Sophie Ellis-Bextor popping her head out of a hat box, and then went back to digital. The results were very interesting as the film verson had a depth and mystique entirely lacking in the digital version. That's not to knock digital; they were both great pictures. The film version though had something about it that the digital version entirely lacked and it was very hard to see exactly what was the cause of this difference.

The greater discepancy for me however was how I felt about Cecil Beaton. I've never really liked his photo's but I know exactly why they hold an important place in the history of fashion photography. What always bothered me more was the knowlege that he had been sacked by Vogue for making a repulsively racist and anti semitic comment in a memo. When I first learned of this it made me like his work even less and I came to see him as an embodiment of the sly racism and arrogance that has always seemed to be threaded into the weave of upper class English society. Whatever my opinions of the man and his gross deed though, should it affect my opinion of his work? I like Degas, love his work in fact, but I'm also aware that he too was a racist of the worst kind and yet whilst I find the views of the man repugnant, I can still enjoy his work. Something in Beaton's work though makes me shudder. Is it because he was photographing haute couture when working class families were starving with no jobs, no welfare system and no NHS? Well, now I'm getting closer to the truth. The socialist in me is rearing his head and saying 'you stupid man! Photographing frocks while millions are living in misery!! You should be out there recording that. Telling the world what's going on!!!' But you know, I've also been guilty of photographing pretty women in nice frocks for magazines while many shades of awful have been visited on the world... And although I've also recorded many of those shades with my camera, it doesn't stop me loving fashion photography and embracing it as a primary influence like two of my heroes Gordon Parks and Frank Horvat once did. And that brings me back to the central question... What is my dislike of Beaton and why can't I divorce it from his work... I suppose that as much as I disparage Beaton for his racism, I too am guilty of prejudice. A prejudice against a class system that played Bridge and drank wine while millions lived off tins of butter beans for supper. A class system that is reflected in this manner in the work of another great photographer, Bill Brandt.

I got to like Beaton a little bit more when I saw this qoute from him...

"Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly."

I could imagine it being drawled in his hissy posh whine and it made me laugh.

But how can we divorce the art from our repugnance at the acts of the person... Is the creator so entwined with the creation that the two cannot be seperated? Can we value and judge something to be good when we know that the racism and sexism in their personalities are brushed deeply into its canvas?

Your thoughts please good people...

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Sink or Swim...

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:34:46 +0100

So. I'm a photographer by trade but in the last few years I've been involved professionally in film making, virtual space, new ideas for web 3.0 and all manner of new media things... As a photographer I didn't exactly shy away from sticky situations (one day I'll do a post called simply 'scars and bullet holes' and tell you about it) but the last couple of years have seen me relax a bit and Photography has had to take a back seat in lieu of other things. Not currently the photojournalist, the highlights this year (which has seen me go back to my magazine style) have included photographing film director Ken Russell and actor Brian Murphy, but the PJ in me hungers for something...

I love the sea but I swim like a lead balloon. I do however keep looking at the fishing boats going out every day and I have it in my mind to leave the digital stuff at home, load up the film stuff with some Tri X pulled to 200, and see if I can blag a few trips out on the boats to document the very dangerous lives of these people...

That's if I can persuade somebody to let me aboard...

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The full stop behind the word technology...

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:13:54 +0100

So much to do and so little time to do it... I'm currently co-ordinatinating a major arts event and decide to work from the office rather than home today...

Driving to the office through the rainy streets of Portsmouth this morning I had been careful to load onto my mobile phone all the details and info I need for the day.

I get to work and... I forgot got to charge the battery and the phone's dead!! Doh!!! LOL!!!

So much for the technological revolution... Perhaps Vodaphone or Virgin can work out a 'Hamster in a treadmill' solution for powering mobile phones in emergencies.

And yes!! I am aware that it would be sensible to have another charger in the office or get a car charger!!:-[" class="middle" border="0"> !!! LOL

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Lucky Find!!!

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:42:47 +0100

I just opened the cupboard and found a bottle of Whisky...

I can't remember buying it, nobody has left it there, and I don't think that aliens landed overnight and left it as a goodbye present, (and if they did, than I want to know why they didn't leave an Aston Martin DB9 as well while they were at it)...

Still, whilst I firmly believe that a pint of plain is your only man, a drop of the craithur is good to my soul as well...

Slainte mhath to you all!!!!!

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The Vicars Tale...

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:29:52 +0100

An English Vicar told me this...

There was an English vicar, who was worried about falling numbers each week in his Church and felt he should inject some life into his sermons.

While in Ireland he saw a hellfire and brimestone Jesuit priest addressing a crowd on a streetcorner. Like many Jesuits he was an educated man and a skilled orator with many tricks to hold a crowds attention.

The priest bellowed out...

'BEFORE I took the priesthood, and WHEN I was in the arms of a woman who was NOT my wife!!!!!!!'

And the crowd went deadly silent in shock, mens mouths gaped, and mothers with babies leaned in to hear closely the next bit...

'.......... My Mother!!!!!!!'

And the crowd relaxed, smiling and entirely captivated.

The English vicar was amazed. In one short sentence, this priest had entranced the crowd, made them laugh, and got then got them listening to the deeply serious business of devils, hellfire, eternal roasting for not paying their car tax and whatever else the business of the day was.

He decided that this was the way to go. No more meek and mild; it had to be ferocious and wild to get the message across... but subtle too. And this opening sentence was the way to get them listening.

Back in sleepy rural southern England the usual flock of old Ladies, bored children, aetheist crooked businessmen hedging their bets, and large middle class families that looked like they were on their way to Nigella Lawson's house for dinner, ambled in to the pews...

He had practised, he felt ready, he stood in the pulpit and was ready to engage and enrapture the crowd with his powerful oratory!!!!...

'Errhh, Mmmmmm, Ok.. Let's see. Yes. Here it is...'

'BEFORE I was a vicar, and WHEN I was in the arms of a woman who was NOT my wife!!!!!!!!!!!'

And you could have heard a pin drop on the floor or a mouse cough!!!

The families froze with their mouths open, the children stopped fidgetting, and the old ladies leaned in more closely to listen to the next bit just as he had expected...

'Er, Mmmmm, Oh blast! Do you know?.. I've forgotten what her name was!!!'

And nothing upon nothing could halt the stampede of feet that echoed toward the big, oak doors and that were destined never to return again......

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We all get what we wish for, just not the way we want...

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:05:00 +0100

I'm thinking about something close to my heart today... The thread of magic in my life that I've grown up with and which I rely upon as a barometer of the direction that things are moving in.

I was brought up with the power to choose my own beliefs. I felt so in tune with what I grew up with though, that despite a brief period of searching and exploring different religions I have stayed in the tradition of my culture; a pagan Romany from along line of the same.

Roma tend to integrate into the religion of whatever culture they are living in. In Europe it is often prediminantly Christian. Romnichael gypsies, the true blooded English Gypsy, are no exception. There are however a number who have always been Pagan (if that is an appropriate term and I personally don't think that it is). My Mother's family followed a kind of belief that is actually very similar to Druidism, and in many ways not like Wicca where power is an essential ingredient. There is a belief in the duality of the God and Goddess that of course relates directly to the Sun and Moon, and a knowledge of and belief in the power of nature. There is magic; and where Druidism and Wicca have no black or white, only the belief that whatever you do that wishes ill will come back to you, we have a dividing line that makes explicit the dangers of crossing the boundaries. I was always told two things... Never divulge to a Gouja (non Romany) the secrets and ingredients of a spell (and I never have), and never practice 'dirty' magic without really meaning it because it will come back to bite you (I have done it, three times in my life for very good reasons, and each time it has found a way to snap at my heels).

The abiding part that has stayed with me is the Tarot. Once upon a time they were used as playing cards in Europe, but their evolution into the playing card we know now was a long one, and they had travelled a great distance to get there across the Far and Middle East where divination had long been their essential purpose. I do Tarot every day and I revere it. Roma, whatever they believe, have long used it as a form of commerce. You pay your money and you hear your past, present, and future. I keep my Tarot as they should always be kept, face down in a drawer and wrapped in a silk scarf. I am the only person who touches them and if you ask me for a reading I may not oblige you depending on why I think you need their counsel. This is not a game. The cards are not to be taken frivorously or lightly and it annoys me when I see people using them for attention seeking and ego ridden nonsense. The cards work on many levels, and on their most basic level they have the power to deeply affect the psychology of the person asking them a question. In Glastonbury where the shops are laden with plastic dragons and fairy statuettes, I'm frequently appalled by the manner in which the Tarot is sold and used as some sort of sophisticated parlour game by people who have not grown up in its culture and have no true respect for its value. The cards will encourage you one day, destroy you the next; and the deeper you enter into the web the more wary you should be of the spider that sits in the corner of it. They are not a toy. The major Arcana and the minor Arcana work as one. They are different strands of the same thread; the grey that encompasses the black and the white. To me, to seperate deliberately them is to divide them through arrogance and opiniated pride and to intrinsically lose their meaning and advice. Divide them and ignore their true meaning at your own risk as you will only ever get a part of the larger story.

The reading of the Tarot is a private affair for very good reason, and to advertise the interaction between you and your cards to seek attention from others is to disrespect the integrity of the system and to debase your own engagement with them. I will however, just once, tell you this... Not because I want to interest you in Tarot, or because I want to lure you to my blog with esoteric mystique, but because the cards speak loudly and today they rang like a bell...

I read my cards this morning as I always do. The reading came back and hit me in the face with the unquestionable truth that what I was seeing was both a past happening I had experienced, a current situation I am aware of, and a future that I had already predicted in my own thoughts. A second reading remained the same and refined the issues. I will take the advice of the Tarot and act accordingly to see with different senses the situation they have revealed.

The Tarot are not an amusement for gameplay, they are to be respected. So if you use them, respect them. They are part of a vast and ancient culture so please honour it.

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Experiment Results...

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:42:14 +0100

The short answer is, yes it definately worked!!!

I had three times as many unique visitors yesterday than any other time since I began this blog... So now folks, you know what to do if you want maximum coverage because I've done the research for you...

Just get the 'S' word on there somewhere in your text...

But please, please be sparing and careful about this!!! If you are writing a blog about Gordon Brown's economic policies I implore you refrain from using it... I have enough nightmares in my life already without the conflation of Gordon Brown and the physical act dogging me in my sleep!!!

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Submissions end NOW!!!

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:01:05 +0100

Whoa!!!! Submissions end NOW!!!

Thankyou to all who participated...

Some interesting ideas and really good writing... So good in fact that it's actually all too good to waste on a piece of nonsense like this so they might well end up as submissions to the new blog if the writers agree it's Ok!!! A couple of them are fabulous pieces of prose. You take my breath away!!!

A consultation will follow with my new co-author as I didn't expect to recieve anything this good and authors will be notified ASAP...

From tomorrow, the Roadrocket blog will be normal service resumed on all channels and thankyou very much for taking part in this ludicrous and outrageous bit of fun!!!

Goodnight all!!!

RRXX

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The SEX!!! Experiment Continues Part Two...

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:16:21 +0100

Wow!! Three participants already!! Keep 'em rolling in. Thats three more than I expected!!! Nothing offensive though, I'm looking for sensual, sexy and how you really feel about yourself and relationships, NOT weird...!!! That was the fourth one but I can't accept it... Sorry!!!!

If I get enough then the result will go out next week. Thank you those who have participated for being open to this. And I think your writing's great!!!

RRXX

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The SEX!!! Experiment Continues...

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:05:11 +0100

Ok... Here we go.... The experiment looks like it worked and I may be on my way to beating yesterdays record (by my standards!) number of unique visitors!!!

Interestingly, I expected the Tags to go crazy with 'pornographic' and 'sexy' etc, but 'Squid Molester'?!!!! Wow, there are some interesting people in Blogland!!!! I'm just glad that I don't work in his local Fish and Chip shop LOL!!!

Here's the deal... Since I disappointed some of you today (but didn't you all come running to the blog!!!), I want you write me a piece of hot and sexy stuff and message it to me - blog length only, nothing offensive or unnatural (I'll keep those ones in a seperate file for record purposes only, LOL), and they should be both HOT and FUN!!!! If you want to tell me that a friend of yours wrote it that's fine, but I'll still know that your nose is growing faster than Pinnochio's...

Authors identity to remain strictly secret to me and ONLY bloggers that are friends of mine or that I know of through my blogging friends are applicable to take part.

I will then (if you all take part and I get enough material) mash and edit the pieces into something risque....

Remember... Authorship will be secret so now worries about that...

Any chancers from outside of the site trying their luck will get unceremoniously binned unless they sign up to the site whereupon I may possibly reconsider my decision...

Roadrockets filthpeddling pornmash is now open for takers!!!... Message your innermost and most secretive to me from now!!!

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