98a. I AM KURIOUS, GRAPEFRUIT (by STUART HUGGETT)

This is Stuart’s third blog in this process of #Demokratisation for December 2023. Read his previous posts about The Foundation Doktor (and indeed The Doctor) and the connection between The Benefaktor and his granddaughter.

Today he is focusing on Little Grapefruit and family, and a kurious twist in The JAMs history (awakening unpleasant memories of that period when I thought that I had killed The Benefaktor). Note too the unexpected Edinburgh connection.

I’m glad that The Benefaktor recovered from his tumble – I still have unfinished business with “Douglas” (as he might or might not be called) and his apparent interference in my father-in-law Curt Finks’ life and legacy for a period spanning 50+ years. I just need a bit of time to piece together the evidence that I have collected over the past few months. It’s all packed up in a box in the boot of our car, outside the Newtonmore hotel where we’re staying before making the final stage of our journey to our new home. Winter tyres already fitted.

Over to you Stuart, with grateful appreciation of the distractions you have provided in this blog. We will hear more about the adventures of Little Grapefruit in post 98b, from another regular GANTOBer. Then we really need to get on the road.

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Little Grapefruit has been touring the continent for weeks but she still keeps in touch with news from back home in Greater Bowlingham. She has particularly enjoyed seeing her travel diaries uploaded onto GANTOB’s blog, recognising many of the places in the old photographs selected to accompany her adventures.

All she has to do is roll herself into an internet café and nestle quietly near a router to tune her mind into the pathways of the World Wide Web. This should not come as a huge surprise to human beings. We accept that birds, bats, dogs and cats all perceive the world differently to us, picking up on audio frequencies and elements of the light spectrum inaccessible to humankind, and Little Grapefruit is the same.

By the time she reaches the next town, it is late and the only internet café has closed for the night. Anxious to catch up on family news and feeling the need for warmth, she rolls along suburban streets until she finds a quiet house with an open catflap and hops inside. Locating the household’s hub in the corner of the dining room, she settles down and starts surfing.

Emails checked and socials perused, she clicks onto GANTOB’s blog and is amused to find it is referencing The Fall again. Little Grapefruit knows all about the group as she takes particular pride in artists that acknowledge her citric cousins. Lemon Kittens, Lime Cordiale and Tangerine NiteMare are all favourites, as is The Fall’s 1988 album and ballet ‘I Am Kurious, Oranj’.

Little Grapefruit begins composing a blog for GANTOB, all about how, that same year, The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu decided to actually become The Fall, attempting to rename themselves The Forever Ancients Liberation Loophole, and how Mark E Smith was having none of it.

She writes about the idea rebounding on Drummond and Cauty when the bootlegging jokers who ran Swansea’s Fierce Recordings turned themselves into a fake Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu in return, releasing a fraudulent JAMs 12” and advertising a New York showcase with The Pooh Sticks together.

A few paragraphs in, though, Little Grapefruit thinks better of it. There just isn’t enough fruit in the story to hold her interest, let alone that of her friends and family back home in Bowlingham, she reasons.

She deletes her email. The KLF Re-enactment Society can deal with that one, she’s sure.

STUART HUGGETT

30 December 2023

Cover image is from a scan of the Pooh Sticks/ fake JAMs gig poster